






■ 






vi*t 






1 

■ ■ 

:!filii;i!lr,; ,.,.i' ^HB 



H ■ 

Mm M 

I 



!i! ,, l u !i:::;„'! 



i 









HI 



■ « 





Pass DA Soo4 
Book i B -S D 3 



LORD BEACONSFIELD 



A STUDY 




BY 



GEORG BRANDES 



AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION 



BY 



Mrs. GEORGE STURGE 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRLBNER'S SONS 

743 and 745 Broadway 
1880 



331 
..(V5 



• 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

Introduction i 

I. The Family '. 6 

II. Boyhood 20 

III. Youthful Ambition . . . .• 28 

IV. Characteristics 48 

V. "Vivian Grey " 63 

VI. "POPANILLA" 76 

VII. Travels Abroad 81 

VIII. Life in London 105 

IX. First Political Campaigns 118 v-" 

X. The "Vindication of the English Constitu- 
tion " 142 ^ 

XI. " Venetia " and " Henrietta Temple " 151 

XII. The Maiden Speech 169 v^ 

XIII. First Attempts in Parliament 178 ^ 

XIV. " Young England " and " Coningsby " 190 

XV. "Sybil" '......' 218 

XVI. The Corn Laws and the Contest with Peel 234 "' 

XVII. " Tancred " 267 

iii 



V 



iv Contents. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XVIII. Disraeli as Tory Leader 291 \/ 

XIX. First Ministerial Office 301 

XX. Disraeli as Leader of the Opposition, and his 

Second Ministerial Office 312 

XXL Opposition, and the Reform Ministry 329 

XXII. " LOTHAIR," AND FOURTH MINISTERIAL OFFICE 345 

XXIII. Conclusion 358 



• 



LC>RD BEACONSFIELD. 



INTRODUCTION. 

It is usual to draw a decided distinction between 
politicians and literary men. There seems to be a 
great gulf between the men of letters and the men 
of action. Every one can bring forward instances 
to show that distinguished savans, orators, poets, 
and professors have shown a want of common sense 
or political. ability if they have left the paths of 
literature for the career of a statesman. We have 
often seen political theorists condemned to play 
but a subordinate part, or to exercise but a tem- 
porary influence, in the parliament of their country, 
and humanitarian poets, like Lamartine, who have 
wearied the national assembly with their lyrics, and 
whose political career has been confined to a single 
great moment. As a rule, then, eminent literary 
ability precludes political action, and, vice versa, 
political action suppresses the development of lit- 
erary powers. Practical politicians, therefore, often 



2 Lord Beaconsfield. 

somewhat undervalue those who come to politics 
fresh from the ranks of literature ; while, on the 
other hand, men of speculative tendencies and re- 
fined culture are apt to have something of the same 
feeling towards the men of eminent administrative 
or diplomatic talents; and when, like Renan, for 
example, they see their fine-spun political theories 
rejected, they find compensation for their wounded 
pride in the idea that shrewd and worldly wise 
mediocrity, in most cases, suffices for the politician. 

Nevertheless, there is an aspect under which lead- 
ing statesmen become literary characters, and fall 
within the sphere of the literary critic. Within cer- 
tain limits, every political magnate has a literary 
side. At any rate, there are his speeches and let- 
ters, and Carlyle has shown how much insight may 
be gained from the letters and speeches of even so 
illiterate a statesman as Cromwell. These produc- 
tions have also, for the most part, a direct literary 
value ; for a superior man, whatever his education 
may have been, generally finds expression for his 
thoughts in a way peculiar to himself : he is original, 
that is, he is in possession of the secret, often with- 
held from many an author by profession, of charac- 
terizing or caricaturing a person or subject by some 
mimic or graphic word. 

Still, in spite of the contrast between theoretical 
and practical men, a long series of exceptions has 



\ Introduction. 3 

shown that literary and political talents may be 
found united. The political historian is sometimes 
transformed into the practical politician, and there 
are still more instances of the transition from poli- 
tics to history. Cicero and Thiers were at once 
eminent authors and statesmen, Julius Caesar and 
Frederick the Great were both men of literary 
tastes, and were at the same time politicians and 
military geniuses. 

Artistic, and still more poetic, gifts are, in the 
case of leading statesmen, very rare, the rarest of 
all. Cavour was a good speaker ; Bismarck is an 
excellent speaker, but he is not a born orator, nor 
was Cavour, who was entirely without artistic train- 
ing ; near the close of his life, after a visit to Tus- 
cany, he said, " I have discovered in myself a taste 
which I did not know that I possessed — the taste 
for art," a saying which accords with what he used 
to say when conversation turned to this subject : 
" I cannot make a sonnet, but I can make Italy." 
Scarcely any one would suspect Bismarck of secret 
poetical productions; a romance or a poem from 
him sounds still more improbable than a sonnet by 
Cavour. Yet there are so many literary productions 
by his hand, that a shrewd critic might try to de- 
lineate his character from them ; but it would be 
anything but exhaustive: it is only in his actions 
that we see the whole man ; the chief characteristics 



4 Lord Beaconsfield. 

of a statesman such as he is are concealed from the 
eyes of the literary critic. 

It is all the more interesting for the critic, when 
by a solitary chance, one of the leading statesmen 
of Europe is also a distinguished author, a poet, and 
a politician, who has portrayed his own character 
and given us his ideas in. his works. The critic 
hereby gains an insight, seldom granted him, into 
the psychology of such a personage. Each work by 
his hand is an instrument which he has fabricated 
for us himself, wherewith we may penetrate into the 
workshop of his ideas ; each book that he has writ- 
ten is a window through which "we may look into 
his mind. Each train of thought which he has re- 
vealed to us, every character he has devised, every 
feeling that he has described, contains, partly, a 
series of confessions which he has consciously laid 
bare, and which must be carefully examined, as well 
as a series of involuntary confessions running paral- 
lel to them, which may be detected ; only no at- 
tempt should be made to extract them by force, or 
you would be apt only to extract what you had 
yourself put in. If the critic be on his guard, both 
as regards himself and the, author, these literary 
productions will afford him more than mere literary 
insight ; for the ideas and sentiments expressed be- 
long to the statesman, and not to him in his charac- 
ter of novelist alone ; they are the outcome of his 



Introduction. 5 

whole character as a man, which is the common 
source and deepest spring of his political and liter- 
ary gifts. 

It will be my endeavour to apply a literary-criti- 
cal method to the present Prime Minister of Eng- 
land. The study of the statesman Lord Beacons- 
field, through the novelist Benjamin Disraeli, is 
attractive to me. Complete materials for the task I 
do not possess, as I write of a man still living, and 
whom I have only seen and heard from a distance, 
as many others have seen and heard him, and for 
knowledge of whom not a single special source is 
open to me. After careful perusal of what already 
exists on the subject, I hope that my method of 
treating it will be found new. Lord Beaconsfield's 
writings have not yet been made the subject of con- 
scientious study, unbiassed by party spirit. The 
portrait of the author has been painted in turn 
by Whigs and Tories, political foes and political 
friends, and hate or partisanship has mingled the 
colours. To me Disraeli is neither an object of ad- 
miration nor dislike, but simply a highly original 
and interesting character; and after long study of 
it, I have not been able to resist the desire to re- 
produce it on paper, 



CHAPTER I. 

THE FAMILY. 

It is only in royal and ancient noble families, in 
which the records of a long series of ancestors has 
been carefully preserved, that it is possible to trace 
with certainty the qualities inherited by an indi- 
vidual, and to follow the combinations and trans- 
formations which the mental faculties of the race 
have experienced in the course of time. Of the an- 
cestors of eminent personages we generally know 
too few, and of the personages themselves too little, 
to study the process of the formation of their char- 
acters in the family. 

Benjamin Disraeli is a descendant of one of the 
Jewish families compelled by the Spanish Inquisi- 
tion to leave the Peninsula towards the end of the 
fifteenth century. These families, who, although 
expelled from Palestine, had never wandered from 
the originally civilized countries of ancient times — 
those in the Mediterranean basin, and who had 
never been exposed to a rigid climate uncongenial 
to the race, formed for a long time the natural aris- 

7 



8 Lord Beacons field. 

tocracy of the Jewish people. They had resided, 
happy and respected, partly in the large cities, part- 
ly on their estates in Aragon, Andalusia, and Por- 
tugal, for the acquisition of landed property was 
not then denied to them. Fanaticism afterwards 
deprived them, by one blow, of all their rights and 
hopes. Lord Beaconsfield's ancestors, therefore, 
took refuge in the Venetian Republic, and, accord- 
ing to a family tradition, as soon as they trod the 
soil of Venice, renounced their Spanish name, and 
" from gratitude to the God of Jacob, who had led 
them through unexampled trials, and unheard-of 
dangers," took the name of dTsraeli, by which the 
family was henceforth to be known. It grew and 
flourished without let or hindrance for more than 
two hundred years. 

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, a 
member of the family resolved to send his youngest 
son, Benjamin, to England, which seemed then to 
secure religious Jiberty to the Jews, and offered a 
favourable opening for commercial undertakings on 
a large scale. Religious liberty, however, was nei- 
ther of long standing nor complete in England. The 
Jews had been expelled from the country long be- 
fore they had been driven from Spain or Portugal. 
They were only tolerated from the reign of Wil- 
liam the Conqueror to that of Richard Cceur de 
Lion ; cruel persecutions then broke out, until, 



The Family. 9 

in 1290, the accusation which we meet with during 
all the Middle Ages, that they used the blood 
of slaughtered Christian children at their Easter 
sacrifices, caused them to be so ill treated and 
plundered that they finally had to leave the coun- 
try. 

A ballad in Percy's " Old English Ballads " shows 
that the popular fancy was constantly occupied with 
the banished race ; these fellow-countrymen and 
murderers of the Redeemer, though the people had 
never seen them, became bloodthirsty monsters in 
their eyes ; and in English literature, Marlowe's 
Barabbas and Shakespeare's Shylock are memorials 
of the superstitious disgust and terror which they 
inspired up to the period of the Renaissance. The 
" Jew of Malta " was, to a certain extent, the pattern 
for his fellow in the " Merchant of Venice." There 
was good reason, in both cases, for laying the scene 
in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, 
for there were scarcely any Jews in England. But 
it was with less reason that in both dramas the 
southern Jew is represented as a type of cruelty ; 
for while on the stage in England he poisoned his 
daughter and whetted his knife to slay his creditor, 
thousands of the race, of both sexes, in Spain and 
Portugal, chose rather to suffer martyrdom at the 
stake than to abjure the faith of their fathers. The 
most sorely tried martyrs of that age were repre- 



IO Lord Be aeons field. 

sented on the English stage as murderers and hang- 
men.* 

It was not until the time of the Commonwealth 
that, protected by Cromwell himself, though not by 
any law, the Jews began to return to England. Un- 
der George II., the Minister, Lord Pelham, was fav- 
ourable to them, and during his ministry, Benjamin 
d'Israeli, the grandfather and namesake of Lord 
Beaconsfield, became, in the year 1748, an English 
citizen, without civil rights. His wife, who be- 
longed to a family which had suffered much from 
persecution, and who was vain and ambitious, was 
ashamed of her Jewish origin, and by an ignoble, 
but not uncommon association of ideas, transferred 
her embitterment at belonging to a despised caste 
from the oppressors to the oppressed. Meanwhile, 
her energetic husband quickly made a fortune, 
bought an estate, laid out a garden in the Italian 
style, entertained company, ate maccaroni prepared 
by the Venetian consul in London, played whist, 
sang canzonets, and, " in spite of a wife who never 
forgave him his name, and a son who thwarted all 
his plans," he lived vigorous and happy till he was 
nearly ninety years of age. 

In seeking precursors of the characteristics of the 
grandson, our attention is involuntarily arrested by 

* " Studienreisen in England," p. 272, von Jul. Rodenberg. 
"Curiosities of Literature," introd., by Isaac d'Israeli. 



The Family. II 

the picture which he himself has given us of his 
grandfather. He was a man of warm blood, san- 
guine, enterprising, and successful, with a tempera- 
ment never ruffled by disappointment, and a brain 
ever fertile in resources, even when one disaster fol- 
lowed quickly upon another. 

It had always been the hope of this ambitious 
and practical merchant, who was, in 1815, a rival of 
the house of Rothschild, to found a finance dynas- 
ty ; but this favourite scheme was frustrated by the 
exclusively literary tastes of his only son. Isaac 
d'Israeli (as he wrote his name) grew up misunder- 
stood by both his parents, and without ever having 
a good word from his mother, who foresaw a life of 
humiliation for her son. His first poem excited 
real terror in his parents' house. He was sent to 
school in Amsterdam, in order that he might forget 
his poetic fancies ; but the school-master, a negli- 
gent man, lived and moved in the atmosphere of the 
eighteenth century, and had a large library of the 
authors of that age, which young d'Israeli eagerly 
devoured. Before he was fifteen he had read Vol- 
taire, and tried his strength on Bayle ; at eighteen 
he returned to England, a disciple of Rousseau. 
His stay at home was but short. His father told 
him that he had decided to send him away again — 
this time to a large mercantile house at Bordeaux. 
The incorrigible literary son answered that he had 



12 Lord Beacons field. 

written a great poem against trade as the ruin of 
mankind. Instead of Bordeaux, he contented him- 
self with going to Paris, where, until 1788, he spent 
his time in libraries and among savans. In Eng- 
land, he soon after began to publish poetical at- 
tempts, as well as those, annals, or rather anecdotes 
of literature, which made his name as an author, 
though they are remarkable neither for spirit nor 
accuracy. 

The character of the quiet man of letters and 
bookworm forms in many respects a marked con- 
trast to that of his son. At first sight, it is like the 
contrast between a learned Benedictine monk in his 
quiet cell, and a restless tribune, whose life is passed 
amidst the turmoil of the forum. Isaac dTsraeli 
was of a shy and retiring nature ; in his youth he 
was inclined to melancholy ; in manhood he was a 
collector ; as an old man he was given up to con- 
templation, too critical to be satisfied with his own 
performances, and too retiring ever to gain confi- 
dence in himself. Not even his growing reputation 
could give it him, for he best knew his own short- 
comings, and he felt an inward schism between him- 
self and the spirit of the age. In a literary point of 
view, he stood in England beneath a waning star ; 
he was a disciple of Pope and Boileau. Neverthe- 
less, he saw the necessity, even by reason of his early 
enthusiasm for Rousseau, of giving more scope and 



The Family. 13 

freer play to nature and passion in poetry, without, 
on the other hand, possessing the powers of mind 
which would have enabled him to anticipate the 
coming change in English poetry. When the great 
naturalistic revolution in the literature of England 
was proclaimed and carried out by others, he was no 
longer young or pliant enough to take part in the 
movement. He lived for literature, but when he 
was young literature was old, and when he was old 
it had renewed its youth. The results of this dis- 
crepancy were, on the one hand, the continual secret 
distrust of his own powers, which is a weakness ; on 
the other, utter absence of vanity, always rare, and 
especially so in an author. Neither the weakness 
nor the virtue was inherited by his famous son. The 
simple bookworm produced a self-confident bravado, 
who has had both adroitness enough to conform to 
the powers that be, and power so to transform the 
tendencies of the age, that they have taken the 
stamp of his mind and will. 

Even in outward things there is a contrast be- 
tween father and son. Isaac dTsraeli lived in seclu- 
sion. When at home, although a married man, he 
generally spent the whole day and evening in his 
library ; his only diversion in London was going 
from one bookseller's to another. It would be 
scarcely possible to imagine a greater contrast than 
his son, who bears the complete stamp of a man of 



14 Lord Beacons field. 

the world. But the contrast is still more striking 
when they are compared in their relations to politics. 
The father not only never took part in politics, he 
did not even understand them. It is clear that the 
son did not inherit his practical political vocation 
from his father. 

And yet nature was experimenting with Isaac 
d'Israeli's mind, and laying the foundations for lar- 
ger abilities. First, his literary studies and tastes 
were of great importance for his son. Nothing 
tends more to easy and rapid acquisition of faculty 
in the use of language than a literary forerunner in 
the race. Then some of the deepest primary facul- 
ties in Benjamin Disraeli's mind are obviously de- 
rived from his father. He was, in many respects, a 
genuine child of the eighteenth century, and every- 
thing in his son's mind which is in unison with the 
character and style of that age was inherited in a 
direct line. In a literary point of view, the father 
was not much more than a living lexicon of authors, 
but a lexicon of the times of the Encyclopaedists ; 
he had early laid aside the prejudices of his contem- 
poraries, in order to imbibe their philosophy, and 
was a decided, though quiet free-thinker, destitute 
of a creed both in the literal or intellectual sense of 
the word. In 1833 he published a work called " The 
Genius of Judaism," in which he ridicules, from a 
deistic standpoint, the Israelitish constitution of the 



The Family, 15 

Mosaic laws and regulations about health and food, 
regarded as revealed and eternal truth. He long 
entertained a project of writing a history of the 
English free-thinkers. He was all his life an unpre- 
judiced sceptic, with a tendency to sarcastic wit. 

This keen and negative quality is also the first 
to show itself in the son. The mystical and roman- 
tic Benjamin Disraeli begins as a satirist. The first 
part of "Vivian Grey," " Popanilla," " Ixion in 
Heaven," and "The Infernal Marriage," are so 
many satires in the spirit of the eighteenth century. 
" Vivian Grey " is a type for Beaumarchais ; " Popa- 
nilla," a fantastic journey in Swift's style ; the family 
descent of the two mythological tales is to be traced 
to no less a person than Lucian ; they would cer- 
tainly not disgrace Voltaire, of whom they remind 
one, and might, without profanation, be set to music 
by Offenbach, so blasphemous are they against the 
gods of Greece. We should not understand any- 
thing of the character of Benjamin Disraeli if we 
overlooked the fact that even his theories and fan- 
tasies, which bear the strongest impress of the great 
romantic reaction, had been, without exception, 
disinfected by born scepticism and early developed 
critical faculty. Even in his castles in the air, you 
do not find the malaria arising from the Maremmas 
of superstition and prejudice; they are the Fata 
Morganas of the desert, the products, consciously 



1 6 Lord Beacons field. 

constructed, of an arid and fiery fantasy ; by careful 
observation they may be easily distinguished from 
the structures of dreamland and reverie, which 
owe their existence to naive and thorough mysti- 
cism. 

Not only the critical and negative, but also the 
positive, romantic, Conservative tendencies of Ben- 
jamin Disraeli are derived from his father. The old 
litterateur, although Radical in a religious sense, had 
an instinctive liking for the Tory way of thinking. 
He was attracted by the house of Stuart; he laboured 
for five years on his work on the reign of Charles I., 
and received for it an Oxford diploma, with the 
dedication, " Optimi regis optimo vindici ; " he con- 
sidered his work on James I. a literary matter of 
conscience. In both cases it was his conviction that 
he was the vindicator of men who had been mis- 
understood, but it was not mere accident that they 
were both crowned heads who coveted absolute 
power, and were defeated in the struggle with Puri- 
tanism and parliament. The son has followed in 
his father's footsteps in these sympathies ; in sundry- 
passages in his writings he has broken a lance for 
the Stuarts ; he has adopted and defended the title 
of " martyr " for Charles I., and he even says, in 
" Sybil/' that never did a man die a hero's death for 
a greater cause — the cause of the Church and the 
poor. That these two unpopular monarchs of for- 



The Family. iy 

mer times were dissenters from the dominant relig- 
ion has, perhaps, conduced to ensure sympathy with 
authors who Sprung from a dissenting body. It is 
plain, however, that the younger Disraeli, however 
little Conservative when he first appeared as a poli- 
tician, was not influenced by political Radicalism in 
the parental home. With the Voltairean opinions 
which then prevailed in good society, he received, 
much earlier, some germs of decided Toryism, 
germs which were enveloped in a certain spirit of 
opposition to the popular conception of the politi- 
cal history of England, but which, under favourable 
circumstances, were strong enough to develop them- 
selves. 

We know too little of Disraeli's mother to judge 
what qualities he may have inherited from her. 
She died after forty-five years of married life, in her 
seventy-second year. He seems to consider that he 
derived his faculties exclusively from the paternal 
side. And we find in the practical energy and en- 
terprising character of the grandfather, the com- 
plement of the purely literary and contemplative 
nature of the father, which seems to be neces- 
sary to weld and polish the practical and literary 
gifts of a descendant of the race into a two-edged 
sword. 

As the son of Isaac d'Israeli, the future states- 
man was born not only with a certain range of qual- 



1 8 Lord Beaconsfield. 

ities, but in a somewhat exceptional social posi- 
tion. Authors then enjoyed higher consideration 
in Great Britain than now, and the elder d' Israeli 
had a popular and respected name. Besides his col- 
leagues, among whom the poet and epicure Samuel 
Rogers was his friend, he was acquainted with many 
of the enlightened politicians and aristocrats of the 
day. The son, therefore, from his youth saw many 
distinguished men and women in his father's house, 
and the father's name opened many an aristocratic 
house to the son. The advantage generally enjoyed 
by the born aristocrat alone of having in early 
youth made acquaintances and connections which 
are otherwise the reward of long years of labour, 
was richly enjoyed by the young Disraeli. In his 
youthful works there are now and then traces that 
he was not unaware of the advantage of having 
such a father. Vivian Grey likes to hear his famous 
father praised ; in the " Young Duke " Disraeli 
dwells on the benefit, even to a boy, of having a 
living proof that the family blood is good for some- 
thing, and says : " There is no pride like the pride 
of ancestry, for it is a blending of all emotions." 
And while the author seems involuntarily to be 
comparing his lot with that of the aristocracy, he 
continues: "How immeasurably superior to the 
herd is the man whose father' only is famous ! Im- 
agine, then, the feelings of one who can trace his 



The Family. 19 

line through a thousand years of heroes and of 
princes ! " * 

♦ Disraeli's singular pride of ancestry goes far be- 
yond pride in his distinguished father ; but while his 
descent was necessarily only a disadvantage to him 
in a worldly point of view, and was the chief obsta- 
cle in his path, his position as his father's son gave 
him the start in the course offered him by destiny in 
the great European race for fame and distinction. 



* " The Young Duke," p. 88. 

Note. — The edition referred to throughout is Lord Beaconsfield's 
Novels and Tales in io vols. Great pains have been taken to find 
all the quotations, but as in many cases no references are given in 
the original work, a few very short ones have eluded me, and may 
not be quite verbatim. — Tr. 



CHAPTER II. 

BOYHOOD. 

Benjamin Disraeli himself gives 1805 as the 
year of his birth, but he really seems to have been 
born on 21st of December, 1804.* His mother, 
Maria Basevi, bore first a daughter, Sarah, then 
three sons, of whom he was the eldest. He was 
received into the Jewish community; but when 
his father afterwards separated himself from it — if 
report speaks truly — he gave his friend Samuel 
Rogers leave to take him to church and have him 
baptized. Rogers was totally indifferent to religion, 
but it seemed to him a pity— so it is said — that this 
fine, intelligent boy should be excluded by his creed 
from the most important civil rights and Jiighest 
social advantages. Anyhow, the baptism took place 
in the parish of St. Andrews, on 31st of July, 1817. 
In the church registers, Benjamin Disraeli is spoken 
of as " about twelve years old." 

He was sent to a private school at Winchester, 
and was afterwards placed for a short time in a 



* Picciotto : " Sketches of Anglo-Jewish History," p. 300. 

20 



Boyhood. 21 

lawyer's office. All desired information as to his 
inner life in his boyhood and early youth may be 
found in his novels. We learn from " Vivian Grey " 
and "Contarini Fleming," which contain unmis- 
takable autobiographical elements relating to these 
years, what we should expect, that in this early 
period of Disraeli's life humiliations abounded as 
well as triumphs. In both books the hero is the de- 
cided favourite among the boys, from his abilities, 
his boldness, and his talents as a leader, and is ac- 
knowledged, so to speak, unanimously, as the clev- 
erest and most original boy in the school. His 
English essays and verses are admired and copied. 
In short, he is the popular hero, while he regards 
his schoolfellows as beings whom he is resolved to 
rule. But behind all this popularity, the possibility 
of a general hatred is concealed, not only the envy 
which always pursues success, but fierce ill will of a 
special kind, brutal in its origin, and cruel in its ex- 
ercise — in a word, the hatred of race. When the 
usher's dislike to Vivian Grey first breaks out, he 
uses the expression, " seditious stranger ; " and no 
sooner has the word been given, than his schoolfel- 
lows join in with, " No stranger ! no stranger ! " * 
This expression does not find its motive in the 
book, for in no sense of the word can Vivian Grey 



* "Vivian Grey," p. 9. 



LC 



22 Lord Beaconsfield. 

be called a stranger in the school. The word has 
obviously crept into the novel from some reminis- 
cence of the author's childhood ; only it was not the 
word used in reality, which more decidedly pointed 
to a foreign nationality, and sounded far more con- 
temptuous. 

On this subject, "Contarini Fleming" comes still 
nearer the truth, in which the hero, with his south- 
ern appearance and Italian descent, finds himself 
unhappy among his fair half-brothers in the north. 
" They were called my brothers, but Nature gave 
the lie to the reiterated assertion. There was no 
similitude between us. Their blue eyes, their flaxen 
hair, and their white visages, claimed no kindred 
with my Venetian countenance. Wherever I moved 
I looked around me, and beheld a race different 
from myself. There was no sympathy between my 
frame and the rigid clime whither I had been 
brought to live." * 

If we add to the Venetian type the still deeper 
Israelitish stamp, and to the national contrast the 
religious prejudice as it existed in an English school 
in 1820, we shall be able to form an idea of Dis- 
raeli's feelings when he emerged from his father's 
house into boy's estate, and found that he was not 
looked upon as an equal, but as a " foreigner " of 

* '■ Contarini Fleming," p. 5. 



Boyhood. 23 

lower caste. Such an impression in those early- 
years is one of the deepest which can be received — 
one of those never effaced from sensitive and aristo- 
cratic minds. To feel yourself disgraced without 
being conscious of any fault ! To be looked down 
upon because of your appearance, your father, your 
people, your religion, your race ! A poor boy among 
rich ones, an illegitimate child among legitimate, a 
Catholic among Protestants, a deformed boy among 
well-grown schoolfellows, feels himself, each in his 
own way, thrust aside and humiliated. But a Jew- 
ish boy in a Christian school of the old-fashioned 
sort felt something of what all these feel put to- 
gether. He learnt for the first time that he was a 
Jew, and all that the name implies. He discovered 
that he was not reckoned as one of the people 
among whom he lived, had no part in the deeds of 
their forefathers or in their history, but was an iso- 
lated being: and yet was constantly thrown with 
others, whom he did not know and had never seen 
before ; who regarded him as ugly, nay, even repul- 
sive ; to whom his mode of speaking was ridiculous, 
nay, even repugnant ; and who pointed at him the 
ringer of scorn. In the reading lessons, a Jew was 
inevitably a ridiculous, vulgar, or mean and avari- 
cious person, a cheat, a usurer, or a coward. And in 
the same class, or one close by, there was sure to be 
another boy of Jewish origin, whose countenance 



24 Lord Beacons field, 

was branded with the mark of slavery, abject and 
degraded to the last degree, made to be a scapegoat 
and clown ; and at every blow struck at this poor 
wretch, he felt his own cheek burn, and every das- 
tardly act of his was felt to be his own shame. Even 
when, by severe struggles, he had won comparative 
immunity for himself, he had not the slightest power 
to protect his brother Jew, or to secure this carica- 
ture of himself from general contempt and brutality. 
And why should he suffer all this ? Not at home, 
but at school did he find the answer. His people, 
who once in far distant ages were the blest and cho- 
sen people, were now cursed and rejected, were suf- 
fering the penalty for a crime committed by their 
fathers nearly two thousand years ago. O igno- 
miny! Unconsciously and against his will, to be- 
long to this despised and accursed nation ! Was not 
his grandmother at Enfield in the right in denying 
her kinship with them ; and was it not the most nat- 
ural thing in the world to hate them himself, and 
thus to acquire the right to be considered an excep- 
tion? 

But this question could not be seriously enter- 
tained ; for see. all these scornful looks, these mock- 
ing, disdainful glances ; listen to this calling of 
names behind your back, to these challenges which 
must be accepted and outbidden. In both the 
above-named youthful novels of Disraeli, the hero 



Boyhood. 25 

has in his school days a great decisive fight with a 
boy put forward by the hatred of a whole clique. 
In both he considers that a great wrong has been 
done him, and in both he takes revenge. But in his 
method of doing it, the character of the author is 
revealed no less plainly than that of the hero. Vi- 
vian Grey revenges himself on the faithless com- 
rades who have left him in the lurch with a tyran- 
nical teacher, by a method projected in cold blood 
and relentlessly carried out. In the next half-year 
he gains favour with this teacher, employs him first 
as an instrument of torture for the other boys, and 
in the end gives him up to them as a victim, while 
he keeps them off from himself with a loaded pistol. 
He leaves the school, saying that if he could devise 
a new and exquisite method of torture he would ap- 
ply it to this teacher, who was the first to apply the 
word " stranger" to him. Contarini Fleming re- 
venges himself with less forethought, but not the 
less completely. He does it in a boxing match with 
a much bigger boy ; he falls upon him like a wild 
beast, and throws him to the ground. Consider the 
following passage : — " He was up again in a mo- 
ment ; and indeed, I would not have waited for 
their silly rules of mock conduct, but have destroyed 
him in his prostration. But he was up again in a 
moment." * 

* " Contarini Fleming," p. 37. 



26 Lord Beaconsfield. 

How characteristic is this turn ! Contarini does 
not respect the accepted rules of the combat, any- 
more than Vivian shrinks from deception as a 
means ; thirst for revenge in both cases is so keen 
that it causes all other considerations to be forgot- 
ten. Read Contarini's account of it : 

" Again I flew upon him. He fought with subtle 
energy, but he was like a serpent with a tiger. I 
fixed upon him : my blows told with the rapid pre- 
cision of machinery. His bloody visage was not to 
be distinguished. I believe he was terrified by my 
frantic air. 

" I would never wait between the rounds. I cried 
out in a voice of madness for him to come on. 
There was breathless silence. They were thunder- 
struck. . . . Each time that he came forward I 
made the same dreadful spring, beat down his 
guard, and never ceased working upon his head, un- 
til at length my fist seemed to enter his very brain ; 
and, after ten rounds, he fell down quite blind. 
I never felt his blows ; I never lost my breath. 

" He could not come to time. I rushed forward ; 
I placed my knee upon his chest. i I fight no more/ 
he faintly cried. 

" ' Apologize ! ' I exclaimed — ' apologize ! ' He 
did not speak. 

" l By heavens, apologize ! ' I said, i or I know not 
what I shall do.' 



Boyhood. 2 J 

" ' Never ! ' he replied. 

" I lifted up my arm. Some advanced to inter- 
fere. ' Off ! ' I shouted. ' Off, off ! * I seized the 
fallen chief, rushed through the gate, and dragged 
him like Achilles through the mead. At the bot- 
tom there was a dunghill. . Upon it I flung the half- 
inanimate body. 

" I strolled away to one of my favourite haunts. 
I was calm and exhausted ; my face and hands were 
smeared with gore. I knelt down by the side of the 
stream, and drank the most delicious draught that I 
had ever quaffed." * 

The sweetness of the draught was in the revenge 
— complete revenge. One sees the natural charac- 
ter of this first brood of Disraeli's boys. There is 
not one drop of the milk of human kindness in their 
blood — no higher law than an eye for an eye in 
their souls. It seems as if these young fellows had 
suffered too cruelly in early childhood to be able to 
restore their equanimity in any other way than by 
procuring inviolability for themselves by methods 
equally cruel, and by quaffing long and repeated 
draughts of revenge. 



* " Contarini Fleming," p. 37. 



CHAPTER III. 

YOUTHFUL AMBITION. 

Benjamin Disraeli was, by the general consent 
of his contemporaries, as a boy and youth, very 
handsome. He had long, raven-black locks ; eyes 
sparkling with spirit and intelligence ; a good nose ; 
a mouth round which there was a restless, nervous 
play ; and a complexion striking from its romantic 
paleness. He was everywhere found attractive, and 
often petted both by men and women. Men were 
delighted with his shrewd questions and witty re- 
plies ; and from women he seems to have early 
learnt what he said in his first book, when scarcely 
twenty years of age, that the only rival which a 
clever man has to fear is a precocious boy. 

What was going on meanwhile in the restless 
mind which was revealed by this expressive ex- 
terior? Wild dreams, passionate affections, long- 
ings for knowledge, and paroxysms of thirst for learn- 
ing. Disraeli shows himself in his earliest works so 
amazingly precocious in worldly wisdom, in fashion, 
and in penetrating, sarcastic observation, that an 

inattentive reader might take him for a purely out- 

28 



Youthful Ambition, 29 

ward-bound character, who had, so to speak, over- 
leapt that first stage of development, in which a 
youth is self-engrossed, searches deep into his own 
heart, weighs his capabilities in secret, and tries the 
elasticity and extent of his powers. But he could 
not really have escaped any of it ; it only appears 
so because he passed through all these stages with 
great rapidity as a boy, while with many Germanic 
natures it occupies the first lustrum of manhood. 
Neither vague dreams, fantastic visions of the future, 
doubt, nor lassitude were spared him. " Contarini 
Fleming " is witness that he was acquainted with it 
all ; but the result of the ordeal was as favourable 
as it was rapidly attained. His brain was fertile, 
and gave birth to dreams, fancies, schemes, intrigues, 
which in their turn gave birth to new ones. He 
was full of courage ; he was not only undaunted, he 
sought for adventures, and the intriguer in his brain 
was the born ally of the adventurer in his breast. 
The result of his self-examination was absolute 
confidence in his powers and in his future. Forti 
nihil difficile, the words which Disraeli inscribed 
upon his banners at his first election, were, long 
before they were formulated into a motto, the 
watchword which coursed with the blood in his 
veins. 

This confidence in himself is a feature of his 
character. While gifted people, doubtful of them- 



30 Lord Beaconsfield. 

selves have to contend with an ever-recurring dis- 
couragement, and characters in which the moral 
element predominates are always trying to make 
new conquests in order to gain self-esteem, and 
cannot feel it before they have earned it, young 
Disraeli felt sure of his abundant resources, lost no 
time in Hstening to the moral lectures of the inward 
monitor, allowed life and destiny — which with its 
smiles and frowns, soon seemed to him the most 
impressive of moralists — to take care of his educa- 
tion, and, from his first entrance on man's estate, he 
felt himself to be an object of respect to himself 
and of value to others. 

Wherever a fund of talent exists, there is a cer- 
tain force which impels it to develop itself, and pre- 
vents the individual from standing still by continual 
excitement of the faculties. The love of gain, of 
acquisition, was a force of this kind with Disraeli's 
immediate ancestors; love of action and zeal for 
reform are frequent forms of it with persons of lit- 
erary or political tastes. Let us inquire what was 
the original motive power in his case. 

There is a very convenient psychological-critical 
method which has often been applied to the present 
Prime Minister of England, which consists of identi- 
fying him with one of the creations of his own brain, 
and boldly ascribing to him every sentiment and 
every dishonourable thought of this character ; but 



Youthful Ambition. 31 

criticism requires more delicate instruments than 
such biographers employ. 

It is not in the rough outlines of a work, still less 
in the moral quality, greater or less, of the charac- 
ters described, that criticism finds vouchers for the 
ego of the author ; but in casual expressions, turns 
of thought which serve as exemplifications ; in the 
choice of metaphors ; in lyrical outbursts, which do 
not belong to the course of the narrative, but which 
will make way for themselves because they fill the 
soul of the writer, and he is unable to restrain them. 

Suppose, for example, that an author has been 
early struck with the impossibility of knowing the 
human soul from books, and wishes to illustrate the 
opinion by instances ; we may be sure that the first 
examples which come to his lips will be those with 
which his own experience has furnished him. Dis- 
raeli exemplifies it as follows: — "A man may be 
constantly searching into the hearts of his fellow 
men in his study, and yet have no idea of the power 
of ambition or the strength of revenge." Ambition 
is the first example that occurs to him ; and it is 
this passion which, in all his early writings, is the 
source of the joys and sorrows of all the characters. 

In " Vivian Grey " he says : " For a moment he 
mused over Power; but then he, shuddering, shrank 
from the wearing anxiety, the consuming care, the 
eternal vigilance, the constant contrivance, the ago- 



32 Lord Beacons field. 

nizing suspense, the distracting vicissitudes of his 
past career. Alas ! it is our nature to sicken from 
our birth after some object of unattainable felicity, 
to struggle through the freshest years of our life in 
an insane pursuit after some indefinite good, which 
does not even exist ! . . . We dream of immortal- 
ity until we die. Ambition ! at thy proud and fatal 
altar we whisper the secrets of our mighty thoughts, 
and breathe the aspirations of our inexpressible de- 
sires. A clouded flame licks up the offering of our 
ruined souls, and the sacrifice vanishes in the sable 
smoke of Death." * 

One hears both the soaring flight and the melan- 
choly of ambition in this lament. Will it succeed ? 
Will my powers be equal to it? We find these 
questionings now and then in Disraeli's earliest 
works, but far more frequently" as to the issue than 
as to his own powers. In " The Young Duke " 
there is a page where the narrator suddenly steps 
out of the book, and, with youthful want of self- 
restraint, entertains the reader with an account of 
the place where he writes, of himself, and his inner 
life: 

" Amid the ruins of eternal Rome I scribble pages 
lighter than the wind, and feed with fancies volumes 
which will be forgotten ere I can hear that they are 

" Vivian Grey," p. 356. 



Youthful Ambition, 33 

even published. Yet am I not one insensible to 
the magic of my memorable abode, and I could 
pour my passion o'er the land ; but I repress my 
thoughts, and beat their tide back to their hollow 
caves. . . . 

" For I am one, though young, yet old enough to 
know Ambition is a demon ; and I fly from what 
I fear. And Fame has eagle wings, and yet she 
mounts not so high as man's desires. . . . 

" Could we but drag the purple from the hero's 
heart ; could we but tear the laurel from the poet's 
throbbing brain, and read their doubts, their dan- 
gers, their despair, we might learn a greater lesson 
than we shall ever acquire by musing over their ex- 
ploits or their inspiration. Think of unrecognized 
Caesar, with his wasting youth, weeping over the 
Macedonian's young career ? Could Pharsalia com- 
pensate for those withering pangs ? 

" View the obscure Napoleon starving in the 
streets of Paris ! What was St. Helena to the bit- 
terness of such existence ? The visions of past glory 
might illumine even that dark imprisonment ; but 
to be conscious that his supernatural energies might 
die away without creating their miracles : can the 
wheel or the rack rival the torture of such a sus- 
picion ? " * 



* " Young Duke," p. 82. 
2* 



34 Lord Beaconsfield. 

This direct address is out of all connection with 
the book, and forms, with its pathetic lyrical flight, 
a remarkable contrast to the fashionable, and, now 
and then, affected frivolous tone of the novel. The 
words were keenly felt, and it was hard to suppress 
them. As one who is possessed of some secret can- 
not sometimes deny himself the satisfaction of giv- 
ing a hint of it in some way not observed by others, 
though his interest is deeply involved in its conceal- 
ment, the young author apparently could not refrain 
from producing an effect by tearing the mask of the 
elegant author from his face in one passage of his 
book, and suddenly disclosing to the reader his real 
visage, furrowed by the sufferings and temptations 
of ambition. 

Ambition as such is not immoral ; it is in itself 
neither moral nor immoral, but natural, and it only 
receives a moral impress from its means and ends. 
It varies according to whether its object is chiefly 
fame or power. In Disraeli's case, desire for fame 
and love of power were both direct products of his 
self-esteem, though they were scarcely of equal 
strength. In case of need, he would rather have 
contented himself with power without fame, than 
with fame without power. It appears to me that if 
he had had his choice, whether to be the powerful 
president of a secret tribunal, or a Tasso feted at 
Ferrara, he would have chosen the former. But the 



Youthful Ambition. 35 

two objects have certainly never been separated in 
his aspirations, although he felt his relations towards 
them to be different. He saw fame before him as if 
he could grasp it, extort it by his talents ; there was, 
therefore, no need to gain over or flatter any one ; 
he would, perhaps, attain it best by challenges on all 
sides. Power was far off, very far, and was only to 
be attained step by step ; the path was slippery and 
tortuous; but he was firmly resolved to spare no 
pains, to shrink from no humiliation, no trial of pa- 
tience, that might lead to the goal. And the goal 
was an actual one. While honour is in its very na- 
ture relative, indefinite in quantity, and you may 
always long for more, the power to which a man 
may hope to attain is something definite. Young 
Disraeli longed at all events for the highest power, 
and if, with his southern blood and fantastic tenden- 
cies in boyhood, we may conjecture that he dreamed 
of dark conspiracies and secret societies, before long 
the brilliant and safe position of a prime minister 
presented itself to him as the real object of desire. 
No sooner did he begin to write than he began to 
portray prime ministers, and with equal imaginative 
faculty and political sagacity. 

The two novels in which they occur, " Vivian 
Grey" and " Contarini Fleming," both bear the 
stamp of psychological biographies, and each is the 
complement of the other. They contain forecasts 



36 Lord Beaconsfield. 

of his own training, both as a politician and a nov- 
elist. Vivian Grey, the hero of the earlier work, is 
a young man inclined to politics, with talents for 
authorship ; Contarini Fleming, on the contrary, is 
an imaginative youth, with talents for politics ; both 
have a passion for power and fame. But that to 
Disraeli power appears to be the chief good, is be- 
trayed most clearly in the career of the novelist, in 
which we should not, a priori, have expected to find 
love of power so strongly accented. 

The task which, according to his own statement, 
Disraeli set himself in " Contarini Fleming," was to 
portray the development of a poetic character ; he 
aimed at giving us his " Wilhelm Meister," with 
this difference — that his hero was to mature for 
poetry, and Goethe's for the realities of life. Am- 
bition is often a part of the poetic nature, but it 
may be latent, and only betray itself in discreet and 
quiet ways. Goethe's " Meister " is only ambitious 
in this way. But let us hear the poet in Disraeli 
describe himself as a schoolboy. " Indeed, exist- 
ence was intolerable, and I should have killed my- 
self had I not been supported by my ambition, 
which now each day became more quickening, so 
that the desire of distinction and of astound- 
ing action raged in my soul ; and when I re- 
collected that, at the soonest, many years must 
elapse before I could realize my ideas, I gnashed 



Youthful Ambition. 37 

my teeth in silent rage, and cursed my exist- 
ence." * 

Years go by, and the poet, whose father is a dis- 
tinguished politician, has suffered his first defeats 
and won his first spurs. In moments of self-confi- 
dence, he saw his genius and destiny struggling for 
life or death, and the struggle ended with his " sit- 
ting on a brilliant throne, and receiving the laurel 
wreath from an enthusiastic people." But politics 
are always almost as attractive to him as literature ; 
through his father's influence he is appointed to the 
post of under secretary of state, and gains a decided 
triumph in the councils of the nation by his decision 
and presence of mind. Would it not be said, on 
reading the following outburst, that this poet, con- 
trary to the intention of the author, showed more 
political than poetical ambition, and a greater de- 
sire for power than for a famous name ? — " I felt all 
my energies. I walked up and down the hall in a 
frenzy of ambition, and I thirsted for action. There 
seemed to me no achievement of which I was not 
capable, and of which I was not ambitious. In 
imagination I shook thrones and founded empires. 
I felt myself a being born to breathe in an atmos- 
phere of revolution." t 



* " Contarini Fleming," p. 33. 
\ Ibid., p. 176. 



38 Lord Beacons field. 

At this moment his father comes to him and 
prophesies that he will become prime minister in 
the country in which they live (Scandinavia), and 
perhaps still more than that, which may mean in a 
country of more importance. The father is mis- 
taken in his son's powers, for he soon returns to lit- 
erature ; but the mistake seems to us only too natu- 
ral, for we do not often find a thirst like this for 
power and action in a poet, and by endowing him 
with these qualities Disraeli has unconsciously be- 
trayed how universal he considers them. In the 
novel, the father and son discuss the question 
whether deeds or poetry, the fame of a statesman 
or the fame of a poet, is to be preferred, and the 
son decides for poetry ; but it can scarcely be 
doubted that it is the father who expresses Disraeli's 
own opinion when he declares for the opposite view. 
In his preface to " Curiosities of Literature," by his 
own father, Disraeli afterwards said that an author 
may have a deeper influence over his contempora- 
ries than a statesman, and that a book may be a 
greater thing than a battle or a congress. This was 
true, and it was his honest opinion ; yet he did not 
mean or feel that it was true in his own case. He 
felt far more deeply what he made Contarini Flem- 
ing's father say, that a poet's lot was a sad one, and 
fame after death a poor compensation for the perse- 
cutions and deprivations in which the lives of the 



Youthful Ambition. 39 

greatest poets have been passed. He early prom- 
ised himself not to be content with posthumous 
fame. He never seriously doubted that action was 
above writing poetry, and Count Fleming speaks 
from his own heart when he says : " Would you 
rather have been Homer or Julius Caesar, Shake- 
speare or Napoleon? No one doubts. Moralists 
may cloud truth with every possible adumbration 
of cant, but the nature of our being gives the lie to 
all their assertions. We are active beings, and our 
sympathy, above all other sympathies, is with great 
action." * 

I have said that by endowing a poet in his youth 
with love of power, he betrayed his belief in the 
universality of the passion. Twelve years later, 
when he knew better than to give the public any 
picture of himself than such as would serve his ends, 
he writes again : " Fame and power are the objects 
of all men." He calls " thirst for power and desire 
for fame " the forces which call us out of social ob- 
scurity, and ambition the " divinity or the demon 
to which we all offer so many sacrifices." Power 
and fame are certainly not the objects of all men ; 
they were not the objects of Franklin, Kant, or 
John Stuart Mill. It was not thirst for these things 
which called men like Spinoza or Newton from ob- 

* " Contarini Fleming," p. 155. 



40 Lord Beaconsfield. 

scurity into immortality. All great men have not 
offered sacrifice to ambition. Washington sacrificed 
nothing to it, nor has Garibaldi. But in utterances 
like these the speaker unconsciously gives us contri- 
butions to his own psychology. 

The first motive of his actions, then, was to raise 
himself, to quench the raging thirst for distinction. 
The source of this thirst was a born love of domin- 
ion, of ruling and influencing other men. A saying 
of Disraeli's in " Tancred " refers to this tendency 
when he is defending an ambitious Syrian emir from 
the charge of having only selfish aims : " Men cer- 
tainly must be governed, whatever the principle of 
the social system, and Fakredeen felt born with a 
predisposition to rule." * 

All depends on what it is that is sacrificed to this 
passion. And there can be no doubt that Disraeli 
soon came to the conclusion that it would not do to 
bargain and haggle too scrupulously. He was not 
made for a Stoic. Even his Vivian Grey stumbles, 
in his ambitious reflections, on the problem how it 
happens that so many great minds are thrust aside 
and misunderstood, and solves it by saying that 
these rare characters are too much engrossed with 
themselves to be able to study others. The cool 
and sagacious youth draws the following conclusion 

* " Tancred," p. 369. 



Youthful Ambition. 41 

from it : — " Yes ; we must mix with the herd ; we 
must enter into their feelings; we must humour 
their weaknesses ; we must sympathize with the sor- 
rows that we do not feel, and share the merriment 
of fools." * 

I certainly should not apply these words to the 
author himself, if I had not found the same idea ex- 
pressed in writings in which he speaks in his own 
name. Even in these he considers it justifiable to 
advocate views and sentiments which you do not 
share, in order to retain power, and to guide a move- 
ment which might otherwise have worse issues. In 
" The Crisis Examined," 1834, he says: "The peo- 
ple have their passions, and it is even the duty of 
public men occasionally to adopt sentiments with 
which they do not sympathize, because the people 
must have leaders." f A duty it never is, and it can 
only be justified in cases of urgent necessity ; but if 
words such as these are not necessarily evidences of 
want of morality, they are undoubtedly the language 
of love of power. 

That a man like Benjamin Disraeli was ambitious 
is only the secret of a Polichinello, a fact too gener- 
ally acknowledged to need proof. But the term 
" ambitious " is but an empty word ; it only expresses 



* " Vivian Grey," p. 18. 

f " Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield," vol. I. p. 121. 



42 Lord Be aeons fie Id. 

the abstract quality in which everything depends on 
the quantity and the method. The study of the 
man's early writings shows to what extent and in 
what way he was ambitious. 

Ambitious, then, he was. And with this irresisti- 
ble longing for power and mastery, he saw moun- 
tains of obstacles rise up between him and his 
desires. He was unknown, he was a commoner, 
without influential connections. England was a 
thoroughly aristocratic country, and full of preju- 
dices, and he was — the son of a Jew. He had, it is 
true, been by accident formally introduced into the 
Christian Church, and thus the absolute obstacle to 
his political career was removed. But the baptized 
Jew was no nearer the goal than the unbaptized, 
the tokens of race and hatred of the race remained. 
One born a Jew the prime minister of a great 
Power ! It was absurd ; unheard of, since Joseph 
ruled Egypt as the favourite of Pharaoh. England 
was ruled by aristocrats, and what was he? A 
pariah. 

A pariah — but why? And here query after 
query arose. Was, then, this mixed population of 
Saxons and Normans, among whom he had first 
seen the light, of purer blood than he ? Oh no, he 
was descended in a direct line from one of the old- 
est races in the world, from that rigidly separate 
and unmixed Bedouin race, who had developed a 



Youthful Ambition, 43 

high civilization at a time when the inhabitants of 
England were going half naked, and eating acorns 
in their woods. He was of pure blood ; and yet, 
strange to say, they regarded his race as of lower 
caste, and, nevertheless, they had adopted most of 
the laws and many of the customs, which consti- 
tuted the peculiarity of this caste in their Arabian 
home. They had appropriated all the religion and 
all the literature of his fathers. They had acknowl- 
edged this literature to be sacred, inspired by God 
Himself, and this religion to be a revelation which 
might be supplemented, but could never be abol- 
ished. They divided their time by Jewish methods. 
They rested on the Sabbath, in accordance with a 
Jewish law, and it was observed by them scarcely 
less literally or fanatically than in the ancient land 
of the race. They considered it to be a virtue, 
even a duty, continually to study the history of his 
ancestors, and taught it to their children before 
teaching them the history of their own country. 
Week by week they sang in their churches the 
hymns, laments, and praises of the Jewish poets ; 
and finally, they worshipped the Son of a Jewish 
woman as their God. Yet, nevertheless, they ex- 
cluded with disdain from their society and their 
parliament, as if they were the offscouring of the 
earth, the race to which they owed their festivals, 
their psalms, their semi-civilization, their religion, 



44 Lord Beaconsfield. 

and their God. He racked his brains. He was not 
a child who took legends for realities ; he was a 
sharp-sighted youth, brought up by a sceptical sa- 
vant in an eighteenth century library, who, when a 
boy, had learnt French out of Voltaire. His father 
had himself put the works of the great Frenchman 
into his hands, because, as a boy, he seemed dis- 
posed to lose himself in fantasies ; and he had de- 
voured the hundred volumes, had read them with 
laughter, with profound admiration, and bitter tears 
over the fate of humanity. It had been a revela- 
tion to him ; the world's history had been transacted 
before his eyes — pedants and priests and tyrants ; 
the folio volumes by blockheads, the funeral bells of 
inquisitors, the prisons of kings, and the wearisome, 
stupid system of deceit and misgovernment which 
had so long sat as a nightmare on the breast of na- 
ture — in a word, all our ignorance, all our weakness, 
and all our folly presented themselves to his view. 
He did not need to ask himself whether orthodoxy 
came forth unscathed from this long indictment 
against the enemies of thought. But what was that 
to him? Those who despised the Jewish race were 
always just those who accepted revelation, while the 
Voltaireans had always pleaded for toleration. Be- 
sides, he did not look at the question at all from 
this dogmatic point of view. He took a practical 
view of it. The Asiatic race to which he belonged 



Youthful Ambition. 45 

had in an intellectual sense conquered Europe, and 
the quarters of the world peopled by Europeans. 
Northern Europe worshipped the Son of a Jewish 
mother, and gave Him a place at the right hand of 
the Creator ; southern Europe worshipped besides, 
as Queen of Heaven, a Jewish maiden ; this was all 
the difference between the two religious parties who 
agreed in contemning his people. He was proud of 
his descent from a race which, scattered, banished, 
martyred, plundered, and humiliated for thousands 
of years, by Egyptian Pharaohs, Assyrian kings, 
Roman emperors, Scandinavian crusaders, Gothic 
chiefs, and holy inquisitors, had still held their own, 
had kept their race pure, and remained to this day 
irrepressible, inexhaustible, indispensable, full of en- 
ergy and genius. When he fell into this train of 
thought, it seemed to him as if he were living 
through the whole history of the race, and as if the 
whole race lived in him — all the departed children 
of Israel in him, Disraeli ; all those who had fallen 
asleep, those who had died in obscure misery, in- 
sulted, tortured, burnt at the stake — they lived in 
him and should receive satisfaction through him. 
And what was it, then, with which this people were 
reproached now ? With rejecting Christ and hating 
Him. He hate Christ ? — the fairest flower and the 
eternal pride of the Jewish race, the son of the 
chosen royal family of the chosen people ! Nay, no 



46 Lord Beaconsfield. 

one hates his own flesh and blood, and he was the 
kinsman of Him whom his race was accused of 
hating. He, too, sprang from a noble family among 
the people which was the aristocracy of man- 
kind. 

Dreams ! Idle dreams ! He was really a pariah 
among the aristocracy of his country — aristocracy as 
they were called. Fine aristocrats, indeed ! ancient 
nobility ! A few of the most distinguished of them 
could, with difficulty, trace their pedigree back for 
eight hundred years to a troop of Norman knights, 
whose fathers were wreckers, Baltic pirates, to 
whom the elements of civilization had' been com- 
municated by priests who taught them the religion 
of Asia ; and to whom did the rest of the great 
families owe their wealth and their nobility? The 
rank was often derived from some cunning cham- 
berlain, who contrived to perform eye-service for 
some tyrannical king ; or to some former club-house 
waiter, who had bought the title of baron, and the 
wealth had mostly one and the same source — plun- 
der ; only with this difference, that some fortunes 
had been made by sacrilege and plunder of monas- 
teries during the Reformation so called, others by 
draining India during the so-called colonization of 
that country.* 

* " Sybil," pp. ii, 89 ; " Tancred," p. 427. 



Youthful Ambition, 47 

Arid now to have to exclaim with the hero of his 
first book : " ' Curse my lot ! that the want of a few 
rascal counters, and the possession of a little rascal 
blood, should mar my fortunes ! ' " * 

* " Vivian Grey," p. 18. 



CHAPTER IV. 

CHARACTERISTICS. 

Let us imagine this passionate impulse to make 
way for himself, the first symptom of which is al- 
ways a desire to attract attention, grafted upon a 
genuine Oriental temperament, and we shall not be 
surprised that Disraeli first exhibited himself in the 
curious character of a dandy. 

The age had something to do with it. He was a 
youth when George IV. was king, of whose pink 
suits and white silk waistcoats his contemporaries 
read long descriptions, and whose inventions in 
shoe-buckles and hat shapes were as much discussed 
as the inventions of mitrailleuses by other monarchs. 
And Disraeli entered the literary circles of good 
society at the time when Byron, not long before his 
death, was the idol of the clever English youth, and 
appeared to them to fee poetry incarnate, as well as 
a model of anti-Philistinism. But Byron was the 
first instance in England of a mixture of romanticism 
which set all rules at defiance, and of coxcombry 
dictating the fashion. He had almost an equal de- 
sire to write verses which should be on everybody's 

4 3 



Characteristics, 49 

tongue, and to excite astonishment by social ca- 
prices at variance with all the usages of society, and 
to introduce new ones. If George IV. and he had 
nothing else in common, they were agreed in their 
admiration of Beau Brummell, the lion among the 
London dandies ; and many of 'Disraeli's writings 
bear witness to the deep impression which had been 
made upon him in former years by Byron's person 
and poetry. His ideal of life at that period may be 
characterized by an expression of his own in one of 
his early works, " half passion, half fashion." * Noth- 
ing could be further from his thoughts than to adopt 
Goethe's well-known saying about good society: 
" It is called good when it affords no occasion for 
the least romance." f On the contrary, the life of 
the elegant world had for him all the poetry which 
it generally has for those originally excluded from 
it, and all the charm which it has for those to whom 
it is an object of ambition. This precociously pol- 
ished youth — who did not for a moment doubt that 
he was, in mind and native nobility, the equal of 
lords and dukes, nay, rather their superior — felt 
himself instinctively attracted by the flutterings of 
the " golden youth," in the sunshine of fortune, and 
he early made it a speciality to describe high society. 

* " The Young Duke," p. 224. 
f . . . maim nennt sie die gute 

Wenn sie gum kleinsten Gedicht keine Gelegenheit giebt. 

3 



5<d Lord Beaconsfield. 

The type of " The Young Duke," published at the 
age of twenty-three, but obviously written before, 
is that which may be briefly described as the Pel- 
ham type : the young man of the world, endowed 
with abundant means, whose follies seem likely to 
ruin him, until it turns out that he is at bottom an 
honourable and chivalrous character, capable of re- 
nouncing all his follies and love of display, to marry 
a young and noble girl, who first disdains, then 
loves and forgives him. Bulwer's " Pelham " ap- 
peared in 1828. " The Young Duke " was written 
during the same time at Rome, and was published 
during the following year. Disraeli, perhaps, looks 
down at his man of the world from a more lofty 
height than Bulwer ; he never holds him up to admi- 
ration ; he likes him, and describes him with indul- 
gence. Much is forgiven him because he is so 
thoroughly aristocratic, so in accord with his rank, 
so fashionable. 

A dandy was at that time in England (as a few 
years later a romanticist was in France) a being 
who, from his appearance, his dress, and his mode 
of wearing his hair, laid claim to be regarded as a 
mortal out of the common run. With his Oriental 
love of show, Disraeli overstepped the line observed 
by the greatest dandies. He was handsome, and he 
knew it. We must imagine him not as he is as an 
old man, but as in his youthful portraits, with a 



Characteristics. 5 1 

wild, melancholy, poetic expression in the Byron 
style ; with his beautiful thick hair parted on one 
side, so that the long glossy locks hung down low ; 
with a broad, limp shirt-collar falling over the care- 
less neck-tie ; a velvet coat of unusual cut, lined with 
white silk ; a waistcoat embroidered with flowers in 
gold ; the hands half concealed with embroidered 
ruffles ; the fingers covered with rings ; the breast 
adorned with an armour of gold chains ; and dancing 
shoes on his feet ; in his hand an ivory cane, the 
handle inlaid with gold, carried by a silken tassel. 
Voila Vhomme, called Disraeli the younger, as he 
exhibited himself in London society, whose latest 
and brightest ornament he is, to an amused and 
astonished world ! He is decked out like a woman, 
and more so than a woman of correct and refined 
taste. 

Disraeli had the true appreciation of one who 
aspires to be a man of the world for the little finish- 
ing touches and advantages which stamp a young 
man as a man of fashion — especially when he not 
only rides the best horse, and drives the best cabri- 
olet, but does it in such a way as to impose his own 
style on others instead of adopting theirs. We 
meet with this Brummell-worship in a number of 
Disraeli's novels. In " Vivian Grey," a German, 
Emilius von Asslingen, is introduced as an arbiter 
of fashion, who, without wealth or rank, and solely 



52 Lord Be aeons field. 

by following his own fantastic tastes without regard 
to anybody else, becomes the living model by which 
royal highnesses and dukes regulate their style. In 
" The Young Duke," the hero himself is a leader of 
fashion. In " Henrietta Temple," Disraeli intro- 
duces, under the fictitious name of Count Alcibiades 
de Mirabel, the leader of fashion in the England of 
that day, the well-known Count d'Orsay, and ex- 
presses without reserve his admiration for this reck- 
less, amiable, and gifted Frenchman, who, with 
champagne in his veins, maintained his position all 
his life as dictator to the tailors and idol of the 
ladies. Better to be the first in the little empire 
of fashion than second in the political arena! Even 
Caesar was a dandy in his youth. 

In his earliest youth, then, Disraeli adroitly adopt- 
ed the tone of the fashionable world ; in society he 
was often silent, but was in the highest degree at- 
tractive when he told stories. He could use both 
flattery and- banter, be cold and devoted at the right 
time and place ; he could touch lightly on impor- 
tant subjects, and talk with humorous importance 
of trifles. To judge from his books, he has pene- 
trated as deeply into the mysteries of the epicurean 
art as into that of the tailor. A man of the world 
does not only eat, he knows how to eat, and can not 
only drink, but make an impression by giving ad- 
vice about the treatment of a Johannisberger or a 



Characteristics. 5 3 

Maraschino. A man of the world is not ashamed 
now and then to give a chapter from Brillat-Savarin. 
One finds in Disraeli valuable contributions to the 
physiology and aesthetics of the palate. His first 
descriptions of London high life swarm with hymns 
to ortolans : " Sweet bird ! ... all Paradise opens ! 
Let me die eating ortolans to the sound of soft 
music ! " — with odes to soups : " Ye soups ! o'er 
whose creation I have watched, like mothers o'er 
their sleeping child ! " * with the wildest expressions 
about the whiting, that " chicken of the ocean ; " 
about the warm and sunny flavour of brown soup, 
the mild and moonlight deliciousness of white ; 
about sherry with a pedigree as long as an Arab's, 
Rhine wine with a bouquet like the breath of wo- 
man. Wherewith can the flavour of a lobster salad 
be better compared than with the arts of a co- 
quette ? And how natural to conclude the compa- 
rison with a regret that a rendezvous with the 
lobster salad is not so harmless as that with the 
lady! 

That is the style — a gastronomic humour spring- 
ing from a lively and sensuous fancy, flavoured with 
a few drops of flippant, yet controlled, frivolity. It 
is the conversational tone of that day ; in good soci- 
ety the sensuality inseparable from fiery youth must 



* << 



The Young Duke," p. 33. 



54 Lord Beacons 'field, 

find vent in gastronomy ; for good society, though 
it looks at sensuality itself through its fingers, does 
not permit some aspects of it to be mentioned. If 
you want to glorify sensual life within the limits 
prescribed by good society, you must sing the 
praises of soup. If you want to extol active life, 
you must treat every sort of sport with the gravity 
that it deserves. Sport banishes all superfluous 
care. " The sight of a pair of spurs is enough to 
drive away all thought of suicide." 

His father's library and London society were the 
first schools through which young Disraeli passed ; 
the short time spent in a lawyer's office only ini- 
tiated him a little into practical routine. Strange 
to say, and characteristically enough, he had no uni- 
versity training. Was he too practical to care for 
it, or too impatient to submit to its restraints? 
One is ready to think it was the latter when he 
speaks, in " Vivian Grey," of the " courage " which 
a young politician has shown in immuring himself 
for three years in a German university. But this 
much is clear, that the want of a learned education 
has avenged itself, and perceptibly left something 
lacking in Disraeli's mind. It is all very well to de- 
spise the wisdom gained from books, and to shrug 
your shoulders at pedants and pedantry ; but learn- 
ing is not to be acquired from political fantasies nor 
learnt in salons. Disraeli never learnt to respect 



Characteristics, 5 5 

learning; he was not inoculated with it in early 
youth, when the mind is open to such impressions ; 
neither has he ever attained scientific insight, for 
neither as a youth nor a man has he ever been 
trained by scientific methods. In consequence of 
this, the germs of fantasy and paradox, which were 
in his mind, were in conditions only too favourable 
for growth. This also opened the way for a curious, 
half-developed mysticism, a taste for the mysterious 
and emotional, a curious preference for all unscien- 
tific knowledge and ideas, if they have any historical 
or practical value, which are opposed to reason. 
This is the explanation of Disraeli's employment of 
the conjuring formulae of the Cabbala as machinery 
in " Alroy," of his general habit of describing secret 
societies as potent forces in history. If in the 
course of a story he can conceal himself behind 
some mysterious apparatus, it has more interest for 
him than the idea which underlies a cause or an 
action. When he is writing of Jews, he represents 
them as connected together all over the world as 
by a kind of freemasonry. When he is describing 
workmen, he loves best to present them in long 
robes, with masks on their faces, ranged around a 
skeleton, initiating a novice into a Trades Union by 
some hocus-pocus, as was the custom in the Holy 
Vehm in mediaeval Germany. He has described 
more than one of the secret societies of European 



56 Lord Be aeons field. 

democracy with profound appreciation of the power 
exercised by them by means of some half-intelligible 
watchword ; and through nearly all his works there 
runs a lively admiration of the Roman Catholic 
Church, with its active organization, mystical doc- 
trines, magical means, and practical ends. With 
what pride he has referred to the fact, in more than 
one of his writings, that there were Jews among the 
first Jesuits, and how he respects the intelligence 
and power of the Jesuits ! One asks involuntarily, 
whether he has half as much respect for all the 
philosophy and natural science of Europe put to- 
gether, and feels that he regards a meeting of scien- 
tific men as of far less importance than a meeting 
of fanatical conspirators. 

At the time when Disraeli entered life, all men 
with poetical or aesthetic tendencies had a common 
object of antipathy — the doctrine of utility. In the 
form of moralizing mediocrity, in which it had been 
presented to them, the German and Scandinavian 
romanticists heaped ridicule upon it. It was usually 
conceived of as a levelling tendency, as hatred of 
the beautiful and the good, and it was opposed in 
the name of poetry, .religion, and heroism. But 
while, in the rest of iSlorthern Europe, Utilitarianism 
had appeared in more or less vague and confused 
forms as enlightenment or rationalism, in England 
it was represented by no less a man than Bentham, 



Characteristics. 57 

who first gave the doctrine a system and a name, 
and his school became more and more a power. 
We find in Disraeli the well-known aesthetic dislike 
to utilitarianism, but with a local and individual pe- 
culiarity. 

Although a plebeian by birth and a freedman by 
baptism, he was a born aristocrat, deeply impressed 
with the feeling that men and races are variously 
endowed. Utilitarianism appeared to him also to 
be a levelling tendency, and, as such, he hated and 
ridiculed it. He calls it an enemy to mountains as 
well as to monarchs. In "Popanilla" (1827) he 
makes a utilitarian philosopher propose to level the 
Andes on the ground that these monstrosities are 
decidedly useless, and, therefore, neither sublime 
nor beautiful. He even asserts, in the Foreign Quar- 
terly Review (1828), that he has met with a personal 
enemy of Mont Blanc. This caricature of utilita- 
rianism appears to him so telling that, a year later, 
he takes it up again in " The Young Duke." The 
duke, on a short journey, in which he travels incog- 
nito, meets with a passenger in a stage-coach, who, 
casting his eyes on the duke's park, declares that 
the park and its owner, as well as all the aristocracy, 
are useless, and ought to be abolished. The man 
extols an author who has made a spirited and vigor- 
ous attack upon the Andes, in which he shows the 
uselessness of everything which lifts itself up above 
3* 



58 Lord Beaconsfield. 

the rest, and condemns these mountains as the aris- 
tocracy of the earth. 

There is nothing specially English in this ; the 
romanticists of all countries would have joined in 
it ; but it is quite intelligible that the man who 
thought thus in his youth should not afterwards re- 
gard the Manchester theories with favour, and would 
never be tempted to put the material interests of 
England above her name and prestige. But what 
does appear to me absolutely peculiar in Disraeli is 
his dislike, concealed beneath jests over its prosaic 
side, to the scientific element in utilitarianism. It is 
repugnant to him because it overestimates abstract 
reason, and undervalues imagination. There is a 
line in ■" Coningsby " which expresses and explains 
Disraeli's antipathy with admirable brevity : " Mor- 
mon counts more votaries than Bentham." Let us 
duly consider this dictum. It merely states a statis- 
tical fact or what is supposed to be so ; but one sees 
behind it Disraeli's contempt for a doctrine purely 
scientific, which cannot, therefore, be fanatical. It 
is placed in the mouth of a person in the book who 
is Disraeli's spokesman, and the train of thought is 
intended to show that neither physical nor econom- 
ical, but mental causes, have occasioned the great 
revolutions in the history of the world. The origin 
of every great deed must, according to him, be 
sought in the imagination : a revolution takes place 



Characteristics. / 59 

when the imagination of a people revolts against 
the Government, and he who appeals to the imagi- 
nations of men is a more powerful, and therefore a 
greater, more eminent man, than he who appeals to 
their interest — so certainly as imagination is more 
potent than reason. 

This, as it seems to me, is the language and these 
the ideas of a man destitute of learning. A more 
scientifically trained mind is sure to regard with 
the greatest respect those undertakings and institu- 
tions which bear a scientific stamp ; and even if by 
historical and philosophical self-culture he has ac- 
customed himself to see reason in phenomena like 
Jesuitism or Mormonism, his recognition of power 
in the political organization of the one and in the 
religious fanaticism of the other, is involuntarily 
mingled with contempt for what is adverse to rea- 
son. In Disraeli's case there is not only no trace of 
such contempt, but rather an admiring sympathy. 
He may, on the other hand, compel himself to ac- 
knowledge the greatness of pure reason ; but what 
he by nature, and involuntarily, respects is the 
catchword which electrifies the unreasoning masses. 

Still, it is in this high value placed on the use of 
imagination, conditioned by the lack of scientific 
training before mentioned, that the originality of 
the man consists. There is some truth, something 
even profound, in this view of imagination as a po- 



60 Lord Beaconsfield. 

litical motive power. It springs from his own pecu- 
liarly imaginative temperament ; and this mode of 
looking at things is to such an extent the central 
point with him, that he who rightly apprehends 
Disraeli's opinion of the part played by imagination 
in politics, and his adroitness in turning it to ac- 
count, possesses the key to his mental powers as a 
novelist and a statesman. 

The characteristic development of the idea in 
" Coningsby " is as follows : — " How limited is hu- 
man reason the profoundest inquirers are most 
conscious. We are not indebted to the reason of 
man for any of the great achievements which are 
the landmarks of human action and human prog- 
ress. It was not reason that besieged Troy; it 
was not reason that sent forth the Saracen from 
the desert to conquer the world, that inspired the 
Crusades, that instituted the monastic orders ; it 
was not reason that produced the Jesuits ; above 
all, it was not reason that created the French Rev- 
olution. Man is only truly great when he acts 
from the passions ; never irresistible but when he 
appeals to the imagination. Even Mormon counts 
more votaries than Bentham." * 

What is here expressed as the opinion of Dis- 
raeli's mature years, hovered vaguely before his 



H< << 



Coningsby," p. 240. 



Characteristics. 6 1 

eyes as a youth, and betrayed itself in his involun- 
tary antipathy to Bentham and the Benthamites. 
He has been opposed to them all his life. At a later 
period, he aimed his blows at them as mere rational 
politicians, who had no eye for the lessons of his- 
tory, or what was historically possible. At a still 
later stage, he opposed the stress laid in politics by 
their successors on material motives and calcula- 
tions which logically led to the principle of non- 
intervention ; but what was most repugnant to him 
in utilitarianism was the contempt expressed by its 
first advocates for imagination, not only in poetry, 
but as a constituent of human nature. Bentham's 
dictum, " All poetry is misrepresentation," chal- 
lenged the poet in him ; but the utilitarian con- 
tempt for imagination altogether, which he consid- 
ered to be the inspiring motive power in every great 
act, incensed in the highest degree the future states- 
man. 

For he was led by his own nature, as well as by 
his first researches into politics, to regard imagina- 
tion as the decisive force in them. He perceived 
that it was not enough to handle existing circum- 
stances adroitly, but that the statesman must have 
the gift of reckoning with the future. He must be 
able to forecast and prepare the future — must, so to 
speak, be able to handle it as his material. He saw, 
moreover, that the statesman must be able to gen- 



62 Lord Be aeons fie Id. 

eralize from the details collected by reading or ex- 
perience, to enable him to form those comprehensive 
views, without which he is the mere slave of routine. 
But he found in the human mind no other faculty 
than political imagination to enable him to form 
this comprehensive view of the present, or to con- 
strue and prepare the future. 

And it was this faculty which enabled him to see 
restless visions, to weave dreams, to forge plans and 
intrigues. When he looked into his own mind, he 
had assuredly no cause to lose heart or to doubt of 
his future. He possessed in an eminent degree the 
faculty on which all depended — imagination, and 
especially imagination applied to politics on a grand 
scale. 



CHAPTER V. 

"VIVIAN GREY." 

" Why, then, the world's mine oyster, 
Which I with sword will open." 

WITH this motto on the title-page, Disraeli's first 
novel went forth into the world in the year 1826. 
And the contents of the book agreed with the motto. 
Vivian is the son of a distinguished author, lively, 
talented, irresistibly attractive, and engrossed from 
boyhood with the idea of making a career for him- 
self. In society he is petted and patronized by a 
dozen women of fashion, but the apparently frivol- 
ous boy is an obstinate and indefatigable student, 
and when he has devoured a mass of historical read- 
ing, he takes to the study, " which is certainly the 
most attractive that exists, but for a boy the most 
dangerous," the study of politics. His first political 
reflection is simply this — How many great nobles 
only want brains to become ministers, and what 
does Vivian Grey want in order to become one ? 
Nothing but the influence of such a noble. He 
thinks that when two people are to such an extent 
necessary to one another, they should act together, 

63 



64 Lord Beacons field. 

and concludes : " There wants but one thing more — - 
courage, pure, perfect courage; and does Vivian 
Grey know fear?"* He answers his own query 
with a bitter and scornful laugh. Vivian is not 
scrupulous in the choice of his means. At a dinner- 
party at his father's house, he begins by flattering a 
blockhead of a nobleman, the Marquis of Carabas, 
and gains his lordship's favour by giving him a 
recipe for tomahawk punch, and another to the 
marchioness for her nervous parrot. The two men 
form a political alliance, and Vivian founds the 
" Carabas party " out of a set of narrow-minded, 
avaricious, and envious landed nobles, in which he 
plays the part among the bluff earls of political 
Figaro. He has not only no doubt of success him- 
self, but succeeds in instilling the same faith into 
others. " For it was one of the first principles of 
Mr. Vivian Grey, that everything was possible. Men 
did fail in life, to be sure, and after all, very little 
was done by the generality ; but still all these fail- 
ures and all this inefficiency might be traced to a 
want of physical and mental courage. . . . Now 
Vivian Grey was conscious that there was at least 
one person in the world who was no craven either in 
body or in mind, and so he had long come to the 
comfortable conclusion that it was impossible that 

* " Vivian Grey," p. 19. 



11 Vivian Grey" 65 

his career could be anything but the most bril- 
liant." * 

It appears necessary to Vivian Grey to attract to 
the new party a real politician of great talent, who 
has retired into private life ; and to this man, whom 
he regards as his equal, he makes no secret of his 
contempt for the other members of the party. Grey 
explains to Cleveland that he is not in the slightest 
degree" duped by the Marquis of Carabas or anyone 
else, but, though he has full confidence in his own 
abilities, he wishes to employ the power of others. 
Ought he to play the part of hermit in the drama 
of life only because his fellow-actors are sometimes 
fools, and, when opportunity offers, become clowns? 

It must not be supposed that the cold and unscru- 
pulous Vivian Grey gains the easy political victory 
that he expects. On the contrary, all his schemes 
are frustrated. As if the author had foreseen, with 
prophetic eye, the long series of disappointments 
and defeats that awaited him, he makes blow after 
blow fall upon his hero of romance. His noble allies 
leave him in the lurch on the first disaster, and load 
him with undeserved contumely. Cleveland, who 
imagines himself betrayed, insults him so grossly 
that Vivian is compelled to give him a challenge, 
and, to crown his misfortunes, kills his former friend 

* " Vivian Grey," p. 44. 



66 Lord Beaconsjield. 

in a duel. He has a serious illness, and, on his re- 
covery, the best thing he can do is to make a long 
tour abroad in order to forget and be forgotten. 

With this, the most remarkable part of the book 
in a psychological point of view, in which the scene 
is laid in England, comes to an end. The second 
and larger part treats of Vivian Grey's travels in 
Germany ; his visits to German baths and courts, 
larger and smaller, of his travelling and love adven- 
tures, his intercourse with great nobles and reigning 
princes and ministers. This second part is consid- 
erably more mature than the first, and appeared a 
year later. Unfortunately, there is not a single 
thread to connect it with the first part. Vivian him- 
self is not the same person ; the work as a whole, 
has crumbled to pieces in the young author's hands. 
Nevertheless, " Vivian Grey " is a sparkling book ; 
there is spirit in the dialogues, and wit in the re- 
flections, which make it even now worth reading, 
and it produced an effect like the contact of flint 
and steel in English society. The cause lay not 
alone in the merits of the book — though such works, 
when the abundant English fictitious literature of 
the nineteenth century had no existence, were a 
rarity; nor was it alone the political matter which 
attracted attention ; the main thing was that the fic- 
titious dish which the young Disraeli had served up 
was spiced with the most appetizing of all condi- 



" Vivian Grey!' 67 

ments, scandal. In the descriptions of London so- 
ciety there were spiteful sketches of well-known per- 
sonages, and when the report of this was spread, 
society of course had no rest until the real name of 
every single character was discovered. " Have you 
read 'Vivian Grey'?" "We are all in it together, 
no doubt." "I sent this morning for a Key to it." 
This was the colloquy in London drawing-rooms 
after the appearance of the book, just as it occurs 
in " Contarini Fleming," after the hero's first novel. 
A number of Keys came out, one of which, in 1827, 
ran through ten editions. Most of the guesses con- 
tained in them were undoubtedly very silly, but so 
much is clear, that the conversation in "Vivian 
Grey " overflowed with direct or veiled personali- 
ties. 

In the mixture of truth and fiction which excited 
so much unsesthetic curiosity in Disraeli's first work 
there was something involuntary, which was to be 
attributed to the author's youth ; but at the same 
time, one of his permanent characteristics was be- 
trayed in it, and it has been repeated nearly every 
time he has set pen to paper as a novelist. In that 
character he never forgets the actual life around 
him ; he does not care for a purely imaginative ef- 
fect ; he wants to strike in at the present moment, 
and in order to this nothing comes amiss to him. 
He finds it hard to tear himself away from the pres- 



68 Lord Beaconsfield. 

ent political situation, even when he wishes to do 
so, for his imagination is not a free bird, although a 
wild one ; it is the trained falcon who executes the 
behests of his ambition and carries out his plans. 

It has been stated almost as a certainty in Eng- 
land, that Disraeli, at twenty, found the original of 
Vivian Grey in the looking-glass, and the only 
youthful thing in the book has been said to be the 
naivete with which the author displays the hard- 
headedness of age. There is, clearly enough, some 
personation of himself in Vivian Grey, for there is 
not the slightest irony in the treatment of him ; but 
the hard-headedness is affected rather than naive. 
The great object of the young author was to make 
an impression on the reader, and, therefore, he only 
described and exaggerated those qualities which he 
considered the most imposing, and which, bad or 
good, he was most ready to confess to. But every- 
body knows that an ambitious youth of eighteen 
or twenty, when he wants to be somebody, desires 
above all things to be the practised man of the 
world, cool and calculating, whose heart has no in- 
fluence over him, or could, at any rate, only be 
touched by a glowing erotic passion, while he is ir- 
resistible to every woman. He has a horror of all 
the softer feelings, reverence and innocent admira- 
tion for persons or ideas, as sheer nonsense. When 
you have not long escaped from the nursery, you 



"Vivian Grey." 69 

tremble at everything that reminds you of it, and if, 
at that age the child within you weeps or indulges 
in vain hopes, it fires the cheek with shame, and 
you feel ready to throttle him. Disraeli's " Vivian 
Grey," especially the first part, is a product of this 
state of mind ; the author is fanfaron de vice, and 
instead of showing himself naive, as he really is, 
forces himself to affectation. No acute reader will 
conclude from " Vivian Grey " that the emotional 
passages in his later works must be false, because 
that work betrayed the author's true character ; the 
critic will, on the contrary, draw conclusions about 
his earlier state of mind from the earnestness of 
feeling of those published but a few years later, and 
thus convince himself of the obvious affectation in 
" Vivian Grey," which Disraeli has ever since him- 
self acknowledged. 

The young author forms the groundwork of the 
character of his hero by making him a political ad- 
venturer. In his mouth there is nothing degrading 
in it. The English word " adventure " means, in its 
active sense, a "venture," and in its passive sense 
that may be said of it which Disraeli makes his 
Ixion write in Minerva's album, and it is repeated, 
word for word, by his alter ego, Sidonia, in " Con- 
ingsby : " " Adventures are to the adventurous." 
With his taste for the fantastic, and his sympathy 
with the aspiring, he always had a certain preference 



jo Lord Beaconsfield. 

for adventures and those who meet with them. In 
the political sphere, certainly, an adventurer is not 
an attractive person. But if the position of affairs in 
England about the year 1826 is taken into account, 
it is easy to see that a gleam of adventure might lure 
a man on, who, without connections to help him, 
wanted to carve out a political career for himself. 
It was so customary for the younger scions of the 
ruling aristocratic families simply to represent their 
opinions, that he who tried to form his own at first 
hand, and make a start in life, seemed to be some- 
what of an adventurer. But Disraeli made this ad- 
venturous feature too glaring ; he sometimes made 
his hero a true Reineke Fuchs, to give the reader 
an idea of his own cleverness, then a Mephistopheles, 
to give them to understand that this debutant in life 
and literature was not to be trifled with. Thus 
Vivian Grey is really terrible, when, with calculat- 
ing coolness, he revenges himself on the woman 
who has thrown him over, and who, from hatred of 
him, has become a poisoner ; but he is not much 
more cruel than the author could be under some 
circumstances. If any one acquainted with Dis- 
raeli's writings will imagine Sir Robert Peel, twenty 
years later, as he writhed upon the Ministerial 
bench under Disraeli's cold and vengeful speech, he 
can hardly fail to be reminded of the glance " beam- 
ing like that of a happy bridegroom," with which 



"Vivian Grey." Ji 

Vivian Grey leaves Mrs. Felix Lorraine, when she 
sinks back in her chair, unmasked, disarmed, and 
entangled in a net from which she cannot escape, 
and breaks a blood-vessel from suppressed rage. 
The thirst for revenge is the same in the nov^l as in 
real life, only in the novel it is too much in the 
Franz Moor style. 

The novel, as the reader will perceive, turns on 
politics; it is, so to speak, a rehearsal for real politi- 
cal chess moves, or the military manoeuvres in which 
our officers are prepared for the tactics of war. 
Nature has but little place in this book ; here and 
there we have a moonlight night or a mountain 
landscape, but they only form a melodramatic back- 
ground for the struggles and perils of the adven- 
turer. Nature is to Mr. Disraeli never anything 
but — what he characteristically calls her in two of 
his works — an Egeria, that is, a source of political 
inspiration. He has taken refuge with her when 
weary of politics, like the tired soldier in the Vivan- 
diere's tent. But he never loved her for her own 
sake. When Contarini Fleming is taking lessons in 
history from Numa Pompilius, he exclaims : " I, 
too, will take refuge with Egeria ; " and he finds 
in a lonely vale embosomed in trees, the wise 
nymph of political inspiration, and day after day 
cannot tear himself away from the ever-recurring 
vision. In " Vivian Grey," Disraeli calls Nature the 



72 Lord Beaconsficld. 

" Egeria of man," and adds with bitter humour : 
" Refreshed and renovated by this beautiful com- 
munion, we return to the world, better enabled to 
fight our parts in the hot war of passions, to per- 
form the great duties for which man appeared to 
have been created — to love, to hate, to slander, and 
to slay." * 

It cannot be denied that this view of Nature is 
original. How plainly the words reveal the restless 
haste with which the ambitious author quaffs a 
draught from the beauties of Nature, only imme- 
diately to turn his back upon her! The poet in 
him needs Nature, and sees in her a Muse ; the 
politician only seeks a stimulant from her, at most 
only asks from her a sign, and thus for him she 
is transformed into a sort of political Muse, who, 
initiated into his plans and struggles, comforts him 
in misfortune, and crowns his victories with smiles. 

The larger part of " Vivian Grey," in which the 
hero travels in Germany, does not, therefore, con- 
tain descriptions of nature, but in spite of much 
that is crude and wanting in good taste, in spite of 
a description of the Bacchanalian revels of the 
Rhenish counts, who are a match for Victor Hugo's 
" Burgraves," it contains many well-conceived con- 
tributions to the characteristics of the small German 

* " Vivian Grey," p. 109. 



"Vivian Grey." 73 

courts of that day and even much later. There is, 
for instance, a Grand-Duke of Reisenburg, who 
prides himself on having the best orchestra in the 
world, and who never misses a new thing at a thea- 
tre. He is equally proud of his scenery, and the 
historical accuracy of his decorations and costumes. 
When he has Rossini's " Othello " performed, Bra- 
bantio's house is a precise copy of the palace San- 
sovino or Palladio on the Grand Canal. Othello 
does not, as usual, appear dressed as a Moor, for 
the dramaturge on the ducal throne thinks it far 
more probable that an adventurer, who has raised 
himself to be general of the army and admiral of 
the fleet of Venice, would imitate even to affecta- 
tion, the manners of his adopted country, and not 
venture to challenge the hatred of his Christian sol- 
diers as a Moor wearing a turban. Disraeli was 
Obviously thinking of the Grand-Duke of Saxe Wei- 
mar, but the passage reads just like a description 
of the ducal theatre of Meiningen of the present 
day. 

But more interesting than this bit of description 
of Germany, is one of the chief characters an the 
book, the prime minister of bourgeois origin, Becken- 
dorf. In him we meet for the first time in Disraeli's 
books with his ideal, so often met with afterwards, 
and most elaborately portrayed, under the name of 
Sidonia; a man with a " master mind," all-sufficient 
4 



74 Lord Beaconsfield. 

to himself, and, therefore, the born master of other 
minds. Beckendorf tells Vivian Grey, who is the 
sport of destiny, that there is no such thing as des- 
tiny ; that man, far from being, as he is said to be, 
the creature of circumstances, himself creates cir- 
cumstances, if he is a man of the right sort. Such 
a man has no other destiny, and no other Provi- 
dence than his own genius, and circumstances must 
serve his genius like slaves ; there is no peril, fear- 
ful as it may appear, from which a man may not 
extricate himself by his own energy, as the seaman, 
by firing a cannon, may disperse the waterspout 
which hangs over his head. 

In vigorous words like these the idea of the in- 
fluence of individual character upon destiny, which 
is a standing doctrine in Disraeli's writings, is thus 
early expressed. Compare with it the vindication 
of this faith written twenty years later : " It is 
not the spirit of the age," says Coningsby. " The 
spirit of the age," answers Sidonia, " is the very 
thing that a great man changes." " But what is an 
individual," asks Coningsby, " against a vast public 
opinion? " " Divine," is Sidonia's concise answer.* 

In " Tancred," the last but one of Disraeli's nov- 
els, we find expressions no less strong, with the 
same tendency ; it is evidently his firm belief, as it 

* "Coningsby," p. 119. 



"Vivian Grey." 75 

has been the belief of many other energetic men. 
It is a faith which does not favour the tendency of 
science in our day, to ascribe everything, characters 
as well as actions, to the spirit of the age, but it 
nevertheless still makes itself heard, and is, anyhow, 
of the greatest practical import. How far it was 
Disraeli's purpose to make his hero profit by the 
vigorous sursum corda which was addressed to him, 
we are not told ; the probability is that he did not 
know what to do with the young fellow, and there 
fore broke the story off suddenly. I have already 
said that in riper years he did not overestimate his 
'prentice work. He complains and offers it as his 
apology that translations and reprints have made 
the suppression of this affected boyish work impos- 
sible. Whether his verdict would have been so se- 
vere if the cynicism of the first part had not soon 
begun to be inconvenient to Disraeli, is a question 
I am unable to answer. 

Only a year after he had given his first romance 
to the world, he followed it by a smaller, quite 
different, and more amiable one, the political satire 
" Popanilla." 



CHAPTER VI. 

" POPANILLA." 

" POPANILLA " is a jest beneath which neither bit- 
terness nor pathos lies concealed ; the satirical darts 
fly in every direction, fantastically and free, not as 
if with a wish to advocate any very definite political 
views, and therefore to cast ridicule on the opposite 
party. 

In the Indian Ocean is situated the Isle of Fan- 
taisie, undiscovered by European circumnavigators 
or missionary societies ; the climate is fine, the soil 
fruitful ; the inhabitants, innocent of civilization, 
pass their lives in a simple paradisaical state. One 
of them, named Popanilla, finds, while seeking a 
precious lost lock of hair on the shore, a box of 
books which has been cast ashore from a ship- 
wrecked vessel. The books contain nothing but 
useful knowledge — philology, hydrostatics, history, 
politics, all written in a utilitarian spirit ; and Po- 
panilla, who, by means of them, discovers to his dis- 
may that his people, whom he had considered some 
of the best in the world, are a lot of useless barba- 
rians, resolves at once to come out as a Radical re- 

76 



"Popanilla" 77 

former, with the wise intention of demanding only 
slow and gradual changes. He begins by going to 
court, and preaching before the king against the 
dancing and singing of his countrymen as useless 
waste of time. It was, he taught, the happiness of 
the community that was the chief good, not that of 
the individual, and the community might be very 
happy, wealthy, and powerful, even if every member 
of it were wretched, dependent, and in debt. Util- 
ity was the object of human life; wants, however, 
were the motives for progress, and unfortunately for 
his countrymen, they had none. They spent their 
lives in a' condition of purely useless well-being; if, 
instead of this, they would begin to take advantage 
of the situation and natural wealth of the island, its 
mineral treasures and extensive harbours, there was 
good reason to hope that the inhabitants would 
soon be a terror to all other countries, and in a con- 
dition to disturb and plague every nation of impor- 
tance. 

When the king of the Isle of Fantaisie begins to 
smile, Popanilla tells him, in Bentham's formula, 
that a king is only the first magistrate of the coun- 
try, and that his Majesty has no more right to laugh 
at him than the village politician. The king takes 
the reprimand quietly ; but when Popanilla by de- 
grees fills the island with loud-talking schoolboys, 
the reforms go too far for him, and he takes the 



78 Lord Beaconsjield. 

spirited revenge of declaring himself a convert to 
the new doctrines, and, as a proof of it, appoints 
Popanilla captain of his mail-packet. " As the ax- 
iom of your school seems to be that everything can 
be made perfect at once, without time, without ex- 
perience, without practice, and without preparation, 
I have no doubt, with the aid of a treatise or two, 
you will make a consummate naval commander, al- 
though you have never been at sea in the whole 
course of your life. Farewell, Captain Popanilla ! " * 
And in the twinkling of an eye the Radical reformer 
is at sea in a canoe, with water and provisions for a 
few days. 

The purpose of this rather mild joke about utili- 
tarianism is to show the fundamental discrepancy 
between progress in civilization and the- greatest 
happiness of the greatest number, which are com- 
bined in the utilitarian theory, and, thus combined, 
are declared to be its aims. Disraeli implies that 
there is a contradiction in them, and that a choice 
of one or the other must be made, since the advance 
of civilization brings disaster and misery to individ- 
uals, while the greatest happiness may be found on 
the lowest stage of civilization, or without any at 
all. The utilitarians used to mourn over the scanty 
wants of a people ; he makes game of this by mak- 

* "Popanilla," p. 384. 



"Popanilla" 79 

ing Popanilla mention it as the misfortune of his 
people that they are so happy without civilization.* 
For the sake of the jest, he had to presuppose an 
original paradisaical state of nature a la Rousseau, 
which has scarcely ever been found by any one else ; 
he certainly did not find it himself in Cyprus, when, 
in 1878, it fell to his lot as Prime Minister to have 
Popanilla's speech made to the natives. In my 
opinion, this assault does not really hit the utilitari- 
ans. True civilization must in the end increase the 
happiness of the masses ; the happiness of the child 
or the savage is not the highest happiness. John 
Stuart Mill says, in his "Theory of Utilitarianism : " 
" It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than 
a pig satisfied, better to be Socrates dissatisfied than 
a fool satisfied." And he is right ; greater sensitive- 
ness, even to pain, is not too dear a price to pay for 
increase of the value of life. 

The banished reformer lands in the empire of 
Braibleusia, " the freest country in the world," where 
freedom consists in every one's being at liberty 
to do exactly like everybody else — a country pre- 
cisely like Great Britain. From the moment of his 
reaching this country, it is all satire on the social 
condition, manners, and constitution of England. 

* The same paradox has been pointed out by Eduard von Hart- 
mann, in a speech of Lassalle's to German artisans. (" Phanomeno- 
logie des Sittlichen Bewusstseyns," p. 637.) 



80 Lord Be aeons fie Id. 

Everything that in the public opinion of that day- 
was above criticism — the doctrine that England was 
the home of civil and religious liberty, and that free 
trade was the only true principle of political econ- 
omy — is made the subject of satire. Blind English 
Conservatism is hit by a satire on the antiquated 
constitution of courts of justice. An attack on the 
Corn Laws shows, as some passages in " Vivian 
Grey " do also, that Disraeli little then foresaw the 
part he was to play in future as their advocate. 
Things turn out very badly for Popanilla in Brai- 
bleusia; after being feted for a while, he is unjustly 
banished, and on meditating on his fate, he comes to 
the conclusion that, if a state of nature is not very 
admirable, a country like that he had just visited 
was too artificial, might have too many assumed 
principles, a civilization too unnatural. With this 
moral the story ends, just as the reader begins to 
weary of the long-drawn allegory — and Popanilla 
sets out on his long voyage. 



CHAPTER VII. 

TRAVELS ABROAD. 

Disraeli soon followed his example. From 1829- 
31 he was on his travels. It is, so to speak, the cor- 
rect thing for young men of the higher classes in 
England to finish their student years with a grand 
tour, which introduces them to active life. All 
young men have a desire to see the world, and no 
one more so than he who does not feel himself al- 
together in harmony with his native land. There 
are many indications in Disraeli's writings that a 
certain discontent immediately preceded his travels. 
The first embarrassment in which we find ourselves 
generally leads to our first travels, he says some- 
where ; and the heroes in both his earliest romances 
set forth at a juncture when staying at home had 
grown painful to them. Perhaps various unfavour- 
able notices of his first works might have contri- 
buted to the desire for a long residence abroad, or it 
may have been that he was merely actuated by love 
of travel and knowledge. Formerly, young Eng- 
lishmen went on the Continent to see what, ac- 
cording to Lord Bacon, " especially deserves to be 
4* 81 



82 Lord Beacons fie Id. 

seen and observed," the courts of sovereigns ; at 
that time, however, they travelled, as some one in 
" Vivian Grey " remarks, " to look at mountains, and 
catch cold in spouting trash on lakes by moon- 
light." * 

As a politician and novelist, the objects of travel 
of the seventeenth century had as much attraction 
for Disraeli as those of the nineteenth. Courts had an 
attraction for him, and he was no less fascinated by 
the romance of certain cities and neighbourhoods. 
He had made a short tour before, as is shown by 
" Vivian Grey." Now it was not the countries and 
cities mostly visited by everyday European travel- 
lers, nor any of the larger centres of civilization 
which attracted him. No, totally different names 
had rung in his ears from childhood — Syria, Jeru- 
salem, Spain, Venice. 

Everybody has, besides his accidental home on 
earth, some other cognate one which he dreams of 
and longs for. With his double nationality, and 
from dwelling on the memories of the race and his 
forefathers, Disraeli had from his earliest youth an 
ardent longing for the East. He longed to see the 
spots on which the eyes of his forefathers had rested, 
to tread the soil trodden by their feet ; in these 
spots he felt that his prematurely hardened spirit 

* " Vivian Grey," p. 209. 



Travels Abroad. 83 

would be softened, his oppressed soul would expand 
with devotion. Yes, it was just this ; for a pilgrim- 
age to those lands was to him not only a longing 
desire, but a religion. He wanted to behold that 
glowing land which was the cradle of the race ; the 
holy city which his people had built, lost, rebuilt, 
and lost again ; the sacred mount whence their re- 
ligion, which had conquered Europe, had gone forth. 
Still, as every man only belongs to his nation 
through family ties, the spots connected with the 
family are dearer to him than those belonging to the 
race. He wanted to see the countries on the Medi- 
terranean, where his fathers had dwelt for five hun- 
dred years ; Spain, where, under the protection of 
their Moorish brethren, they had made progress in 
civilization, and produced poetry in the ancient lan- 
guage of the race ; and he sought among the names 
of the distinguished families of Spain for the one 
which his fathers might have borne before they 
changed it, and lingered dreamily over the proud 
and fine«-sounding name of Sidonia, which, years 
afterwards, he gave to one of his heroes in " Alar- 
cos " and " Coningsby ; " but, above all, he longed to 
behold the wonderful city on the Adriatic, whose 
patron, St. Mark, himself a child of Israel, had been 
so kind a lord to the banished race. When, as a 
boy on his grandfather's knee, he had heard of the 
city of the doges, with its floating palaces, and learnt 



84 Lord Beaconsfield. 

that the city was no longer free, he had in his early 
dreams fancied himself the liberator and doge of the 
restored republic. Now, as a young man, he longed 
to see Venice as he longed to see Jerusalem. It 
seemed to him as if he must go there, as if he were 
expected, had been expected for centuries — he, the 
inheritor of all these memories. Distant voices 
seemed to call him, and the blood in his veins an- 
swered, and his heart beat high for this fantastic 
calling, until the day came for him to bid farewell 
to his father, and to address to England the parting 
words which, some years later, he made Contarini 
Fleming address to his Scandinavian home : " And 
thou, too, Scandinavia, stern soil in which I have 
too long lingered, think of me hereafter as of some 
exotic bird, which for a moment lost its way in thy 
cold heaven, but now has regained its course, and 
wings its flight to a more brilliant earth and a 
brighter sky ! " * 

Disraeli has not written anything about the jour- 
ney itself. But we find from his writings* that he 
visited all the countries bordering on the Mediter- 
ranean, that he was in Rome and Constantinople in 
1829, Albania in 1830, Egypt, Syria, and Jerusalem 
in 1 83 1. The tour has left traces in all his works, 
and whole works owe their origin to it. 

* "Contarini Fleming," p. 190. 



Travels Abroad, 85 

Various feelings agitated the mind of the young 
traveller as, for the first time, he approached Ven- 
ice. When Contarini Fleming was nearing the 
Italian frontier, he dreamed one night at a village 
at the foot of the Simplon that he was in a large 
apartment in a palace, where richly clad and hon- 
ourable men were sitting in council, and that the 
president, on seeing him, held out his hand to him, 
and said with a smile, " You have been long ex- 
pected." The council is at an end, and the presi- 
dent, as cicerone, conducts Contarini into a smaller 
apartment, hung with pictures, where, on one side 
of the door, there was a portrait of Julius Caesar, 
and on the other of Contarini. His guide points to 
the portrait and says, " You have been long ex- 
pected. There is a great resemblance between you 
and your uncle." * A third time he hears it con- 
firmed in his dream that he has been expected in 
these halls ; and suddenly he beholds a splendid 
city, whose marble palaces gleam in the sunlight 
along a broad canal, where multitudes of long boats 
pass to and fro on the blue waters, and then he 
knows where he is. No sooner is he awake than 
he proceeds to Venice. The first thing he meets in 
the street is a procession of chanting priests with 
their saint, and when he hears the words of the 

* " Contarini Fleming," p. 197. 



86 Lord Beaconsfield. 

hymn, it seems to him that these words are appli- 
cable to himself — " Wave your banners ! Sound, 
sound your voices ! for he has come, he has come ! 
our saint and our Lord ! He has come in pride and 
in glory, to meet with love his Adrian bride." * 

In such a frame of mind as this Disraeli first took 
boat on the canals of Venice, and set foot on the 
Piazza. Some have loved the beautiful city, with- 
out dust or noise, for its peculiarity ; others for its 
art treasures ; others, yet again, for its historical as- 
sociations ; but Disraeli's love was not so impersonal. 
He had no enthusiasm for the Venetian school of 
art, nor for its aristocratic republican constitution, 
whose introduction into England he began, a few 
years later, to mourn over and attack. The city 
moved him so deeply because it had been the 
asylum of his fathers ; he loved it for the sake of 
his kin, his race. It is chiefly personal reasons like 
these that call forth his love. 

But Venice only stills his first thirst for seeing. 
No country or city of Europe could turn his mind 
from the East. He visited Egypt, saw the Pyra- 
mids, for which his people of old had had to drag 
the materials, stone by stone. He succeeded in 
getting several audiences of the reigning pasha, 
and, having attracted the notice of Mehemet Ali 



# «» 



Contarini Fleming," p. 207. 



Travels Abroad, 87 

by his ready and thoughtful answers, Mehemet 
seems to have even asked his advice as to the sys- 
tem of government best adapted to the country. 
He has mentioned this, not without pride, in his 
" Vindication of the English Constitution," where 
the travelled young Englishman is, of course, the 
author himself. It was in the year 1829 that an 
assembly had been convened by the reform-loving 
Egyptian despot at Cairo, which might, according 
to Turkish notions; be called a representation of 
the people, and the pasha asked the intelligent 
young Englishman what he thought of an Egyp- 
tian representative constitution after the English 
pattern. 

"The surprise of our countryman, when he re- 
ceived the communication of the pasha, was not 
inconsiderable ; but he was one of those who had 
seen sufficient of the world never to be astonished ; 
not altogether untinctured with political knowledge, 
and gifted with that philosophical exemption from 
prejudice which is one of the most certain and most 
valuable results of extensive travel. Our country- 
man communicated to the Egyptian ruler, with 
calmness and with precision, the immediate difficul- 
ties that occurred to him, explained to the successor 
of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies that the political 
institutions of England had been the gradual growth 
of ages, and that there is no political function which 



88 Lord Beacons field. 

demands a finer discipline or a more regulated prep- 
aration than the exercise of popular franchise." * 

Disraeli with Mehemet AH is a sort of historical 
parallel to Byron with Ali Pasha. Byron's vanity 
is flattered because Ali discerns the aristocrat in his 
outward appearance ; Disraeli's because Mehemet 
discovers his political sagacity. 

It is plain that it was not 'dear to Disraeli at that 
time whether poetry or politics was his true voca- 
tion. His self-esteem inclined him to overrate his 
abilities, and while wandering in Byron's footsteps 
in the East, he often fancied that English poetry 
would find compensation in him for what it had lost. 
Self-criticism was never his strong point, especially 
in his youth. Perhaps nothing in his life has given 
plainer proof of this than what he tells us of a poet- 
ical idea which he conceived soon after setting foot 
on Asiatic soil. In a high-flown and theatrical pre- 
face, he tells us how, as he wandered over the plains 
of Troy, with his head full of the Homeric poems, 
he cursed his fate in having been born in an age 
which boasted of being unpoetic ; and how, just as 
the lightning flashed over Mount Ida, the idea 
flashed into his mind that all the great epic poems 
in the world had embraced the spirit of a complete 
age, and that he, in order to be a true poet, had 

* " Vindication of the English Constitution," p. 102. 



Travels Abroad, 89 

only to give poetic expression to his own. He goes 
on to say that the heroic epic, the " Iliad," origi- 
nated in the greatest heroic deed of a heroic age; 
the political epic, the " ^Eneid," in the establish- 
ment of the Roman Empire of the world; the 
national epic of Dante, in the first dawn of the Re- 
naissance ; the religious epic of Milton in the Refor- 
mation and its results ; and he then asks himself 
whether the spirit of his own age is to remain un- 
sung. " How," I exclaimed, " is the French Revo- 
lution an event of less importance than the siege of 
Troy? Is Napoleon a less interesting character 
than Achilles? The revolutionary epic has been re- 
served for me." 

I will not now dwell on the grotesque coupling of 
the names of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton, 
with that of Disraeli, nor on the parallel between 
the most famous poems in the world and an epic of 
which but an unhappy fragment ever saw the light, 
only to retreat into the dark womb of obscurity, 
scared by the ridicule with which it was assailed ; 
but I wish to call attention to the fact that Disraeli, 
whom we find warning Mehemet Ali against radical 
attempts at reform, was in his youth attracted to 
the French Revolution as the most important and 
interesting subject of the age. He was never ad- 
verse in principle to modern political ideas. When 
he has opposed them, it has been from interested 



qo Lord Be aeons field. 

motives or on some incidental ground. There is a 
great difference in this respect between him and 
theoretical Conservatives, like his present colleague 
in the Ministry, Lord Salisbury. He has even a 
curious sympathy with decidedly revolutionary phe- 
nomena. In his writings he has portrayed men like 
Byron, Shelley, and Mazzini in a remarkably favour- 
able light. He has, in his old age, described with 
absolute enthusiasm the character of a goddess of 
liberty, the very ideal of revolutionary freedom, 
Theodora in " Lothair." Many will have queried, 
in reading his books, whether there was not a touch 
of the revolutionist in the bosom of the old Tory 
leader. The question, What is the inmost or deep- 
est sentiment in a man ? is always difficult to an- 
swer, especially in the case of very composite char- 
acters. 

In reviewing the whole of Disraeli's literary pro- 
ductions, and the whole of his political action, there 
will always be found beneath the Conservative 
groundwork a layer of Radicalism, and at the same 
time a firm Conservative basis beneath any surface 
Radicalism. On the religious question, he has from 
the first been on the liberal side, but the desire to 
assert the absolute superiority of his race has com- 
pelled him to make the very most of the religious 
benefits which it has conferred on mankind, and of 
the gratitude which mankind owes it. He began 



Travels Abroad. 91 

his career as a novelist with " Vivian Grey," with- 
out any particular principle, and his first political 
brochure was ultra-Radical ; I have already referred 
to the political reactionary impressions he had re- 
ceived from his father. Did they at first excite his 
opposition? A youth so much inclined to make 
himself the standard of all things, without regard to 
any external authority, must inevitably have a strong 
tendency to opposition ; but who can say whether 
what appears uppermost is also the deepest down 
in a man's heart ? Besides, all such expressions are 
but metaphors. 

" The Revolutionary Epic," which, although con- 
ceived when on his travels, was not published till 
1834, and may have undergone several Conservative 
retouches in the interval, was intended to depict the 
struggle between the feudal and the federative prin- 
ciple, and the transition from the one to the other. 
The fragment which appeared began with strange, 
supernatural machinery. Magros, the genius of feu- 
dalism, and Lyridon, the genius of federalism, plead 
in turn for their cause, and it ends by Napoleon — 
Lyridon (!) giving his word as a pledge of faith ; the 
third canto accompanies him through the whole 
Italian campaign to the conquest of Lombardy, and 
closes with the planting of the Tree of Liberty. In 
the preface, the author made the continuation of the 
work dependent on the verdict of the public, and 



92 Lord Beaconsfield. 

said that if it were unfavourable, he would, without 
regret, hurl his lyre into the nether regions. 

There were far deeper impressions and stronger 
excitements in store for Disraeli on his tour than 
those which he experienced on the plains of Troy, 
and the deepest of all was on the day when, after a 
ride of several hours among wild and barren rocks, 
he ascended a hill, and was told that it was the 
Mount of Olives, and beheld before him a city on 
the steep and lofty precipice, surrounded by an old 
wall, which, with its towers, pinnacles, and gates, 
rose and fell, wavelike, with the undulating ground. 
His eye lingered on the splendid mosque which 
towered above the city, on the beautiful gardens in 
front of it, and the numberless cupolas which rose 
above the light-coloured stone houses, and he felt 
that he was gazing on Jerusalem. One of the old 
Crusaders could scarcely have been more deeply 
moved than he was, though his feelings might have 
been different. They loved the city for heaven's 
sake, for the salvation which the conquest of it was 
to procure for them ; he loved it for the sake of the 
race which had built it. He mentally compared the 
city of the many hills before him with the city of 
seven hills in Europe, and remembered with pride 
that Moriah, Zion, and Calvary were far more famous 
than the Aventine and the Capitol ; for not Asia 
alone, but Christian Europe knew their names, while 



Travels Abroad. 93 

in Mohammedan Asia the others were but empty 
sounds. The old Crusaders considered the Saracens 
unworthy to possess the Holy City and the Holy 
Sepulchre ; he considered them far more worthy 
than any of the European hosts; for not only did 
they venerate the city and the sepulchre, these sons 
of the desert were far more nearly allied to Him 
who had lain in the grave than any Teuton or Gaul. 
The Crusaders held faith to be all in all ; he knew, 
as he oft repeated to himself, that " all is race ; there 
is no other truth." * 

He felt himself at home in this country where 
there were caravans of turban-wearing men ; where 
the sheikh, as thousands of years before, was the 
patriarch of his tribe, and opened his tent to him as 
in the olden time. He loved these palms, these 
cedars and olive groves. And when Jerusalem lay 
before him in the glow of a summer day, like a city 
of stone in a land of iron under a fiery heaven ; and 
when the burning glare of the surrounding land- 
scape" made the spectator afraid of being blinded ; 
when everything was so awfully and brilliantly clear, 
that the pilgrim stood like the shadowless man in 
the fairy tale, with a shadowless world around him 



* Sidonia in "Tancred." Compare his expressions in " Con- 
ingsby " and Disraeli's own in the " Life of Lord George Bentinck," 
and in the " General Preface." In " Tancred" the author calls this 
dogma " the great truth into which all truths merge." 



94 Lord Beaconsfield. 

— he felt his brilliant mind and his fiery imagination 
to be akin to this arid and glowing land. There 
was no shady spot in his soul, there was no place 
there for rest or repose; he had always despised 
and shunned the shady aspects of life. He was 
happy in this land, where every inch of ground re- 
minded him of Israel's greatness ; at the foot of 
Sinai, from which the law of Moses was proclaimed, 
to be learned even now by every civilized child ; 
among the ruins of the Temple, which recalled to 
mind the great king, whose wisdom still lives in the 
Proverbs ; at Gethsemane, where the martyr had 
suffered, whose pure and simple teaching has con- 
quered the Western world. He did not in his re- 
flections separate Jesus from the other lights of the 
Hebrew nation. He did not doubt that Jesus was 
descended from the royal house of David ; Biblical 
criticism did not then exist, and even when it was 
introduced it did not fit in with Disraeli's system to 
degrade the genealogy of Jesus in the New Testa- 
ment into a mere invention with a special purpose ; 
Jesus must and should be a prince. It is deeply 
characteristic of Disraeli's menta4 habit, that in the 
numerous passages in his works where Jesus is men- 
tioned, he never speaks of Him otherwise than as a 
Hebrew prince, a Hebrew ruler. His estimate of 
Him is increased because He comes of the aristo- 
cratic blood of the race; the instinctive attraction 



Travels Abroad. 95 

which he had always felt for the highest aristocracy 
compelled him in this case to lay most stress on 
that which best comported with his ideal ; hence it 
is that the royal blood, the princely descent, is much 
more to him than the supernatural origin ; and so 
much the more because the latter made the former 
impossible, as it is Joseph, not Mary, who is shown 
to be the descendant of David. That Disraeli, 
nevertheless, from the moment when he appeared 
as a Conservative statesman, was not afraid of the 
paradox of maintaining extreme orthodoxy, is to be 
explained by the fact that, in the nineteenth cen- 
tury, a statesman, especially in England, and espe- 
cially a Conservative, must, above all things, offer 
orthodox guarantees ; but it was also to be attrib- 
uted to the fear that, if he dropped the supernatural 
origin of Jesus, he would be depriving his race of 
the nimbus which encircled it, as the people among 
whom God Himself, as Redeemer of the race, was 
born. But his own private ideas respecting Jesus 
were different when on the soil of Palestine. He 
compared Him, in his reveries, with Caesar and 
Alexander, who were both deified after death, and 
he found new proof of the superiority of his race by 
comparing the duration of their influence as deities, 
with that of Jesus considered as God. Both were 
called gods, but who burnt incense to them now ? 
Not even their own nations worshipped them, while 



g6 Lord Beaconsfield. 

they and scores of others bend the knee before the 
altars erected to the descendant of David. Could 
there be a greater triumph for the race which he 
felt to be personified in himself ? What was this 
New Testament? According to its own testimony, 
it was only a supplement. Jesus came to fulfil the 
law and the prophets. It was, therefore, by no 
means enough to say that Christianity was unintel- 
ligible without Judaism. If Christianity was not 
Judaism completed, it was nothing. What was 
the fundamental difference between Jesus and His 
predecessors ? It was that through Him " God's 
Word " was diffused among the Gentiles, and not 
among the Jews only. And Disraeli summed up 
his conception in this concise and Jewish-aristo- 
cratic phrase, " Christianity is Judaism for the mul- 
titude." * 

But different as his sentimentality was from that 
of the Crusaders, he had poetic dreams which were 
akin to their poetic religious projects. He, too, 
dreamed of a liberation of this country, inasmuch 
as in his imagination he pictured former attempts 
to do it ; the peculiarity of them was that the 
liberation was to restore the country to the original 
race. 

It was at the burial-place, north of Jerusalem, 

* "Sybil," p. 130. " Tancred," p. 427. 



Travels Abroad. 97 

called the Tombs of the Kings — and of its very un- 
certain title to the name he, in his romantic mood, 
entertained no doubt— that the memory of a figure 
of the twelfth century occurred to him, which had 
interested him even in his boyish years, and whose 
character and fate he had early begun to weave 
into a fiction. This was the Jewish prince, and 
afterwards legendary hero, Alroy. 

He lived at a time when the Caliphate was weak- 
ened, and four Seljuk sultans had divided the in- 
heritance of the Prophet between them ; but they, 
in their turn, had begun to languish from luxurious 
living, and therefore saw with concern the increas- 
ing power of the kings of Karasme. Although the 
Jewish nation after the conquest of Jerusalem had 
acknowledged the supremacy of its conquerors, the 
Jews of the East still retained self-government 
within certain limits. They had their own courts of 
justice under a governor of their own race, who bore 
the title of the " Prince of the Captivity." The 
power of this prince always rose and fell in inverse 
proportion to that of the Caliphate, and the annals 
of the people tell of periods when the Prince of the 
Captivity enjoyed power and dignity scarcely less 
than those of the ancient kings of Judah. David 
Alrby was one of these princes, the memory of 
whom was recalled to Disraeli's mind by the 
Tombs of the Kings, and he pictured to himself 

5 



98 Lord Beaconsfield, 

his inner life. What a painful paradox, even in the 
title ! A prince without territory or independence, 
a tributary prince, the ruler of a captive people ! 
Disraeli knew what he must have had to suffer who 
was born to be a ruler of this sort ; he could readily 
imagine Alroy's humiliation and grief when the first 
yearly tribute-money was demanded by his power- 
ful oppressors ; and even though he found his peo- 
ple not only despised and scorned, and still worse, 
so degraded that they no longer cared, but doggedly 
put up with it all, even though they were so en- 
slaved and dishonoured that their state by the rivers 
of Babylon was a paradise compared with it ! . . . 
See the chief of the Seljuks now defies David Alroy 
himself ; he even dares to lay hands on his sister ! 
Now the measure is filled up ; Alroy slays the ty- 
rant, flies the country, and resolves to become Isra- 
el's deliverer. Why should he not succeed ? The 
greatest of the ancient kings, the first David, had 
raised himself to the throne from being the out- 
lawed captain of freebooters ; why should not he be 
able to do what his fathers had done? Solomon 
had built the Temple, and made the kingdom fa- 
mous ; he would rebuild the Temple, and make the 
kingdom more famous than ever. He would wield 
the sceptre which Solomon had wielded ; he would 
make the times, which lay buried in the Tombs of 
the Kings, rise up again from the dead. 



Travels Abroad. 99 

And Disraeli gazed across the great forecourt 
hewn in the rock, to the Tombs of the Kings — on 
the western side of them a vestibule opened, once 
supported by pillars, the stone pediment of which 
was still decorated with a carved frieze of uncom- 
mon beauty — and he dreamed that the fugitive Al- 
roy approached this place by magic, where the de- 
parted kings of Israel were sitting on their thrones, 
and the realities around him resolved themselves 
into a splendid imaginative picture. David Alroy 
had to pass through long alleys of colossal lions of 
red granite till he came to an enormous portal in 
the rock, several hundred feet high, supported by 
immense caryatides. Alroy presses his signet-ring 
against this gigantic door ; it opens with a rumbling 
noise, like that of an earthquake, and, pale and 
trembling, the Prince of the Captivity enters the 
vast hall, which is lighted with hanging globes of 
glowing metal. On either side are seated, on 
thrones of gold, the kings of Israel, and as the pil- 
grim enters, they all rise, take off their diadems, 
wave them three times, and three times repeat, in 
solemn chorus, "All hail, Alroy! Hail to thee, 
brother king ! Thy crown awaits thee ! " * As 
Contarini Fleming was expected at Venice, so Da- 
vid Alroy is expected here. 

* "Alroy," p. 91. 



100 Lord Beaconsjield. 

He stands, trembling, with downcast eyes, leaning 
against a pillar ; but when, having come to himself, 
he looks up, he finds that the kings are still sitting 
on their thrones, gazing lifelessly before them, appa- 
rently unaware of Alroy's presence. He advances 
into the hall till he comes to an immense throne, 
extending all across the room and towering high 
above the others. A figure with imperial bearing 
sits enthroned on it, who amazes and dazzles Alroy. 
Ivory steps, every step guarded by a lion of gold, 
lead to a jasper throne. Light emanates from the 
glittering diadem of the figure and from its face, 
which all at once becomes beautiful as a woman's 
and majestic as a god's. In one hand he holds a 
signet-ring, in the other a sceptre. 

When Alroy reaches the foot of the throne, he 
stands still for a moment, and feels as if his courage 
would fail him. But he soon regains self-possession 
with a silent prayer, and ascends the ivory steps. 
The Prince of the Captivity stands face to face with 
the great king of Israel. But Alroy tries in vain to 
attract his attention. The large dark eyes, which 
shine with supernatural radiance, and look capable 
of seeing through and revealing everything, are 
blind to Alroy's presence. The pilgrim, pale as 
death, once more summons up all his courage for 
the sake of the people of Israel. With deep emo- 
tion he stretches out his arm, and with gentle firm- 



Travels Abroad. 101 

ness, without meeting with any resistance, he wrests 
the sceptre of Solomon from his great ancestor's 
hand. 

Just as he grasps it the whole scene vanishes from 
his view, and at the same moment it vanishes from 
that of the dreaming Disraeli. He stood again in 
the great rocky forecourt of the little vestibule from 
which the steps led down to the subterranean space 
hewn in the rock, in the midst of the miserable re- 
alities which had called up these glowing visions. 

But it was while still in Palestine that he began 
to write his romance of the singular destinies of 
Alroy. He became for Disraeli, so to speak, what 
the Aladdin of his day was for Oelenschlager, an 
Oriental fabulous or mythic personage, in whom 
he could conveniently embody some of his boldest 
youthful fancies, and his greatest idiosyncrasies. 
The romance " Alroy " did not meet with success ; 
it was not appreciated. But Alroy has never alto- 
gether deserted Disraeli ; it was not one of those 
ideas of which a poet delivers himself by carrying it 
out. Alroy has certainly accompanied him through 
life, and I should not be surprised if the passage in 
which he seizes the sceptre occurred to Lord Bea- 
consfield, when, at the Congress of Berlin (in full 
accord with his definition of England as an Asiatic 
power), he snatched the British supremacy over 
Asiatic Turkey which brought those countries, over 



102 Lord Beacons field. 

which David Alroy acquired dominion, under the 
sovereignty of Benjamin Disraeli. 

" Alroy " is a work with great faults. The style 
is, in many parts, an intolerable " poetic prose ; " 
especially in the beginning the rhythm is affected. 
The supernatural apparatus derived from the Cab- 
bala and the Talmud is superfluous, and recalls 
Southey's unfortunate poem, " Thalaba." The nar- 
rative is something between historical romance and 
legend ; it is only in the dialogue that you see Dis- 
raeli's extraordinary superiority to Southey, for he 
has the true Oriental temperament, which supplies 
him with the colouring ; but, with the exception of 
the dialogue, all is unreal, and a great deal childish ; 
the descriptions of Alroy's combats with the caliph's 
armies, for example, remind one of troops of leaden 
soldiers moved hither and thither. The chief per- 
forms marvels of valor, and slays the sultan's stand- 
ard-bearer, but, unfortunately, 10,000 soldiers are 
killed ; the centre is broken by Midianitish cavalry, 
whom the Caucassian soldiers put to flight with the 
loss of so many men, etc. The romancer can nar- 
rate what he likes, slay at his pleasure, but you find 
yourself in an unreal world, and amidst child's play, 
which has no psychological interest.- 

The psychological interest of the romance con- 
sists almost exclusively in the development of Al- 
roy's character. He has scarcely come off victorious, 



Travels Abroad. 103 

and achieved his first task of liberating Israel, than 
the task itself seems insignificant to him, and he 
seeks for some greater object, for no one has been 
able to withstand him, and Western Asia lies at his 
feet. He will not be content with rebuilding Solo- 
mon's Temple ; his ambition is not to be so easily 
satisfied ; he wants to found a great Asiatic empire. 
" The sceptre of Solomon ! " he seems to hear re- 
echo around him, but those who thus speak begin 
to seem to him narrow and bigoted. Is not the 
sceptre of Alroy greater than Solomon's ? Shall it 
be recorded in his annals that he conquered Asia, 
and employed his power in rebuilding a Temple ? 
Shall the ruler of Asia sink into the governor of an 
insignificant province like Palestine, the virtuous 
patriarch of a pastoral tribe ? No, Bagdad shall 
be his Zion, victorious Israel must and shall be re- 
conciled to vanquished Ishmael, and they must, in 
spite of the protests of Jewish fanatics, be placed 
on an equal footing. " Universal empire must not 
be founded on sectarian prejudices and exclusive 
rights." * 

This ambition occasions Alroy's fall. The Israel- 
itish religious fanaticism, which raised him to vic- 
tory, now turns against him with embitterment, at 
the time when he is himself forgetting the projects 

* "Alroy," p. 141. 



104 Lord Beacons field. 

and resolves of his youth by the side of a Moham- 
medan Sultana in luxurious Bagdad. The King of 
Karasme assassinates him, and succeeds to his em- 
pire and his bride. 

It appears as if Disraeli, when at Jerusalem, had 
for a moment indulged the idea that his powers 
were equal to the task of restoring the Holy Land to 
the chosen people, but had come to the conclusion, 
on thinking it over, that his ambition for statesman- 
ship on a grand scale could never be realized if 
allowed to spend itself in a contest for power of 
extent and importance so limited. He perceived 
that, even if he were permitted to arrange every- 
thing according to his will, abilities like his could 
never find a fitting arena, but on the soil of a great 
Power in Europe. Much had taken place there 
during his absence, and while he was dreaming in 
the East of the deeds of mythic heroes. 

In France, the July revolution had overturned a 
monarchy, and placed a wandering Ulysses on the 
throne. In England, a revolution, no less complete, 
was projected, which was to be carried out amidst 
general agitation — that revolution in the British 
Constitution called the Reform Bill. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

LIFE IN LONDON. 

At that time there were still salons in London, 
and one of the most frequented was that of the 
well-known Lady Blessington, a great beauty, who 
was inseparable from her son-in-law, Count d'Orsay. 
Her house had a certain character of distinguished 
Bohemianism. The countess had long been sepa- 
rated from her second husband ; Count d'Orsay's 
wife had left him after two years of marriage, and 
made way for her stepmother. The salon was only 
frequented by gentlemen ; but all the men, so to 
speak, assembled there, who had inherited a dis- 
tinguished name or made a name for themselves. 
In 1847, H. C. Andersen met there such men as 
Dickens, Bulwer, and the eldest son of the Duke of 
Wellington. When Disraeli returned from the East 
in 1 83 1, Lady Blessington's house was one of those 
he most frequented. 

In a literary aspect, the bias of the house was 

to admire Byron, and do homage to his memory. 

Lady Blessington and Count d'Orsay had made 

Byron's acquaintance in Italy, and had won his 

5* 105 



106 Lord Beaconsfield. 

regard ; Count d'Orsay especially, as shown by the 
poet's notes, made a very favourable impression on 
him. Lady Blessington had for some time taken 
upon herself to defend Byron's memory from unjust 
attacks, and did it without any ideal exaggeration. 
This tendency could not fail to suit an ardent ad- 
mirer of Byron like Disraeli. In Lady Blessington's 
house, as it appears, he made the acquaintance of 
the influential statesman, Lord Lyndhurst, after- 
wards Lord Chancellor, to whom, several years 
later, he dedicated his romance, " Venetia," a sort 
of Byron memorial. 

Politically, Lady Blessington's salon was decided- 
ly opposed to the Whigs. Count d'Orsay was a 
celebrated caricaturist, and all his caricatures were 
intended to make the Whig policy ridiculous. In 
this also, the tone of the house suited Disraeli. 

On the one hand, he was sufficiently aristocratic 
in his tendencies to feel himself attracted by the 
Tory party, and on the other, he was sufficiently 
revolutionary to sympathize with the masses and 
the Radicals ; but from the first, the Whigs were 
repulsive to him, and in nothing, throughout his life, 
has he been so persistent as in his antagonism to 
them. In " Popanilla," when describing the British 
Constitution, under the form of an image of gold, 
silver, and iron, he remarks that the race of iron, 
namely, the populace, if they cannot exactly have 



Life in London. 107 

their own way, would far rather vote for gold than 
silver, if it were a question of repairing the statue. 
So early as this is the alliance indicated between 
the Tories and the masses. 

Lady Blessington was, besides, an intimate friend 
of the Bonaparte family ; fifteen years later, Hans 
Andersen found a portrait of Napoleon I. in every 
one of her rooms. At that time, she frequently saw 
at her house the exiled members of the family, and 
thus Disraeli was brought, by a curious chance, at 
the beginning of his career, into contact with two 
other ambitious men who were destined to play a 
great part in politics, Louis Napoleon and Count de 
Morny. The latter was at that time far from hav- 
ing acquired the brilliant polish which made him 
the personification of the Second Empire, and the 
model after which Feuillet drew his Monsieur de 
Camors, and Daudet his Duke of Mora. He wrote 
little French love songs, which he sang to his gui- 
tar. It is interesting to think of Napoleon III. and 
Lord Beaconsfield meeting, as young men, in the 
same room. What similarity, yet what a contrast ! 
Both, when they were nobodies, dreamers of wild 
dreams of grasping the highest power ; both were of 
imperialist-democratic tendencies ; both had fantas- 
tic notions that they were the chosen scions of a 
chosen race. But at the same time, what a contrast 
between the son of Hortense, born, as Sainte-Beuve 



108 Lord Beaconsfield. 

satirically remarks, " near the purple," growing up 
in the shadow of Caesar, and never giving up the 
idea of returning to the splendours in which his 
childhood had been passed ; and the plebeian son 
of Isaac d'Israeli, by whose cradle it was never sung 
that he would one day be the acknowledged leader 
of the proudest aristocracy in the world ! And, 
finally, what a contrast between the premature fail- 
ure of the one and the indomitable energy of the 
other ! 

It is scarcely to be doubted that, on his return 
from his tour, Disraeli was to all appearance as much 
occupied with society as he was with the studies by 
which he was preparing himself for his political ca- 
reer. The idea never seems to have occurred to him 
of choosing a calling ; he scarcely ever doubted that 
he would possess a mine of gold in the future. A 
young man with so firm a belief in his star, would 
have little scruple about anticipating some of the 
money which its ascendancy was to bring him ; and 
Disraeli, it may be conjectured, soon found himself 
compelled to incur debts. Anyhow, it is indisputa- 
ble that from the moment when he entered on a 
political career, he had to contend with great pecu- 
niary difficulties. Election expenses were enormous, 
the bribery necessary engulfed fabulous sums, and 
so far as Disraeli was concerned, all these expenses 
were at first thrown away ; whenever he offered him- 



Life in London. 109 

self as a candidate, he was defeated. When he at 
length succeeded in getting returned for Maidstone, 
he did not stand next time for the same place, prob- 
ably because he was unable to meet the demands 
of the avaricious constituency. He offered himself 
for Shrewsbury, and a statement, published on this 
occasion by his opponents, shows that during the 
years from 1838 to 1841 alone, there were fifteen 
different claims made upon him for debts, for sums 
varying from ^"20 to £700, and amounting alto- 
gether to ^"20,000. 

Gold had a great attraction for Disraeli from his 
earliest youth. From different points of view, it 
might be said that he had the greatest respect or 
the greatest contempt for it. He despised it, for he 
always regarded it as a thing of no importance ex- 
cept in heaps or by the ton — as something that it 
behoved him to have, and which he must have, as 
soon as occasion should arise for him to scatter it 
freely. And he cherishes a repulsive respect for 
money, because he has such a taste for wealth and 
luxury that life does not appear to him worth hav- 
ing without it ; all his works, without exception, deal 
with very rich men and women ; millions and such 
nice round sums roll from side to side through his 
novels ; the few poor people who appear in them 
end inevitably, if they enjoy the author's sympathy, 
by gaining or inheriting a fabulous fortune. Balzac 



no Lord Be aeons field. 

is a novelist who is considered on paper to be fond 
of rolling in riches ; but in comparison with Disrae- 
li's dukes and lords, his counts and bankers are in- 
significant people, millionaires with francs instead of 
pounds sterling ; and compared with the London 
described by Disraeli, Balzac's Paris is a mere deco- 
rated workhouse. His descriptions ripple with gold 
like the waves of a gold river ^ there is a sound like 
the rattle of gold pieces when you put his books to 
your ear. 

He must from time to time in his early youth 
have keenly felt the want of the treasure he so much 
coveted, and have felt longings for the precious 
metal. Did he ever play ? Both as a novelist and 
a man of the world he wanted to be acquainted with 
everything, to have experienced all sorts of mental 
excitement at least for once. 

Even in " Vivian Grey " there is a gambling scene, 
which betrays early experience ; but of far more im- 
portance is the great scene, portrayed by a master 
hand, in "The Yoimg Duke." It is so heartfelt, so 
evidently the result of experience, so thoroughly 
true, that Disraeli has never written anything show- 
ing equal insight and commanding power. All the 
stages of agitation through which the hero passes in 
the two days and nights during which he plays, are 
described with so much psychological delicacy, that 
they are no less interesting than the vicissitudes of 



Life in London, in 

a love story or of a battle. You feel how at first 
gambling is a pleasure, raises the spirits, sharpens 
the appetite, and how by degrees it becomes a pas- 
sion which deadens every sense except the eye for 
the cards, so pregnant with destiny, which are 
brought in fresh every half-hour, while the old ones 
are thrown on the floor. I quote a passage : — 

"Another morning came, and there they sat, 
ankle-deep in cards. No attempt at breakfast now, 
no affectation of making a toilet or airing the room. 
The atmosphere was hot, to be sure, but it well be- 
came such a hell. There they sat, in total, in posi- 
tive forgetfulness of everything but the hot game 
they were hunting down. There was not a man in 
the room, except Tom Cogit, who could have told 
you the name of the town in which they were living. 
There they sat, almost breathless, watching every 
turn, with the fell look in their cannibal eyes, which 
showed their total inability to sympathize with their 
fellow-beings. All forms of society had been long 
forgotten. There was no snuff-box handed about 
now, for courtesy, admiration, or a pinch ; no affec- 
tation of occasionally making a remark upon any 
other topic but the all-engrossing one. Lord Castle- 
fort rested with his arms on the table; a false tooth 
had got unhinged. His Lordship, who, at any other 
time, would have been most annoyed, coolly put it in 
his pocket. His cheeks had fallen, and he looked 



1 1 2 Lord Beaconsfield. 

twenty years older. Lord Dice had torn off his 
cravat, and his hair hung down over his callous, 
bloodless cheeks, straight as silk. Temple Grace 
looked as if he were blighted by lightning ; and his 
deep blue eyes gleamed like a hyaena's." * 

During the forty-eight hours during which he is 
at the gaming-table, the young duke loses over 
;£ 100,000; but his fortune can bear it, and the loss 
only serves to cure him of his passion for play. 
Disraeli maintains that not only is this passion one 
of those most easily overcome, but that play is a 
habit which frequently gives young men knowledge 
of themselves, because, when on the brink of ruin, 
their better self awakens and asserts itself. This last 
opinion would not seem to have been drawn from 
the experience of others. 

On reading the pathetic words in which, at the 
beginning of " Henrietta Temple," he warns young 
men never to accept an offered loan without sure 
prospect of being able to repay it, one imagines that 
he must sometimes have felt it a real misfortune to 
be in debt. "If youth but knew the fatal misery 
that they are entailing on themselves the moment 
they accept a pecuniary credit to which they are not 
entitled, how they would start in their career! how 
pale they would turn ! how they would tremble, and 

* " The Yaung Duke/' p. 244. 



Life in London. 113 

clasp their hands in agony at the precipice on which 
they were disporting ! " * 

This exclamation is not the less sincere because, 
singularly enough, he dates the year before the one 
in which actions for debt, mentioned above, began 
to shower down upon him. But although he really 
meant it, my idea is that it was rather a momentary 
outbreak, and a warning for less hardened and more 
impressible minds, than Disraeli's customary way of 
regarding debt. In his novels there are many young 
men in debt, none of whom do any work — their 
social status is too high for that — but who, in spite 
of the various difficulties in which their creditors in- 
volve them, all escape from them with whole skins, 
rich and prosperous. Captain Armine, the hero in 
" Henrietta Temple," is undoubtedly depressed by 
the pecuniary troubles which he has brought upon 
himself by his extravagant bachelor life ; he has to 
pay humiliating visits to hard-hearted money-lend- 
ers, and to accept services from others ; he even 
makes a short acquaintance with the debtors' prison, 
described with Dickens-like humour; but his mar- 
riage with Miss Temple brings him compensation in 
the wealth of Golconda. Egremont, the hero in 
" Sybil," is unable to meet the great expenses of his 
election, and, like Captain Armine, keeps concealed 

* " Henrietta Temple," p. 62. 



1 14 Lord Be aeons fie Id. 

for a time in a small country house, but when his 
beloved Sybil comes to glory and honour as heiress 
of princely estates, his embarrassments are soon for- 
gotten. But I do not imagine that it is in the senti- 
ments of these gentlemen of the fair-skinned race 
that we find Disraeli's own reflected, but in Fakre- 
deen's, the young emir, described in so masterly a 
style in " Tancred," who is always over head and 
ears in debt, but never feels the least inconvenience 
from it — on the contrary, he pays visits in the ut- 
most good humour to his creditors in the towns 
along the Syrian coast. 

" Fakredeen was fond of his debts ; they were the 
source, indeed, of his only real excitement, and he 
was grateful to them for their stirring powers. The 
usurers of Syria are as adroit and callous as those of 
all other countries, and possess, no doubt, all those 
repulsive qualities which are the consequence of an 
habitual control over every generous emotion. But, 
instead of viewing them with feelings of vengeance 
or abhorrence, Fakredeen studied them unceasingly 
with a fine and profound investigation, and found in 
their society a deep psychological interest. His 
own rapacious soul delighted to struggle with their 
rapine, and it charmed him to baffle with his artifice 
their fraudulent dexterity. He loved to enter their 
houses with his glittering eye, and face radiant with 
innocence, and, when things were at the very worst, 



Life in London. 115 

and they remorseless, to succeed in circumventing 
them?"* 

Does not the reader see Disraeli's own character 
in this description ? Just so one can picture him 
taming and managing his creditors more like a tiger 
himself than the tigers around him. " Dear com- 
panions of my life, that never desert me ! " Fakre- 
deen exclaims of his debts. " All my knowledge of 
human nature is owing to them. " f 

Minus the jest and exaggeration, I do not doubt 
that Disraeli has felt the same, has found pleasure 
in feeling his capacities develop, and in measuring 
his craftiness with that of others, when it was neces- 
sary to find expedients, to practise patience and di- 
plomacy until — like his 'heroes — a wealthy marriage 
with a beloved lady helped him over these fugitive 
studies in the vestibule of political intrigue. 

It is not alone in Fakredeen's relations to his 
debts that I find a likeness to the character of 
young Disraeli. There is in the emir's political 
character the most curious mixture of lofty aims 
and ambiguous conduct, of faith in an idea, and faith 
in intrigue ; and this is characteristic of Disraeli 
himself, when he is about to throw himself into ac- 
tive political life. Fakredeen is engrossed with the 
idea of the reorganization of Western Asia. Some- 

* " Tancred," p. 270. f Ibid. p. 271. 



n6 Lord Beacons field. 

times he is animated by Disraeli-like confidence in 
the power of ideas, or in formulae which appeal to 
the imagination, but the next moment he looks 
about him for petty means and artifices ; now he 
fully believes in a policy of magic and spells, such as 
that " a man might climb Mount Carmel and utter 
three words which would bring the Arabs again to 
Grenada, and perhaps further." * Then, again, the 
idea appears too improbable that any great religious 
truth can again proceed from the plains of Meso- 
potamia, and he thinks of nothing but by what in- 
trigues he can obtain a large loan, or arms without 
paying for them. In a way somewhat analogous to 
this, Disraeli, on his return to England, was divided 
between the desire to gain political 'influence, by 
proclaiming some great simple truth, that might be 
of service to the country, and the desire not to frus- 
trate his aims by any ill-judged or irrevocable parti- 
sanship. He could not resist the possibility of 
advancing himself by intrigues. He has indirectly 
acknowledged this when he says, in a passage in 
" Coningsby : " " The two years that followed the 
reform of the House of Commons are full of instruc- 
tion, on which a young man would do well to pon- 
der. It is hardly possible that he could rise from 
the study of these annals without a confirmed dis- 

*"Tancred," p. 303. 



Life in London. 117 

gust for political intrigue ; a dazzling practice, apt 
at first to fascinate youth, for it appeals at once to 
our invention and our courage, but one which really 
should only be the resource of the second-rate ; great 
minds must trust to great truths and great talents 
for their rise, and nothing else." * 

It did not require this veiled confession to tell us 
how great was the charm for Disraeli in those days 
of the game of politics and its labyrinthine and 
hidden paths. His first political campaigns reveal 
it plainly enough. 

* " Coningsby," p, 66. 



CHAPTER IX. 

FIRST POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS. 

We have now reached the year 1832, the great 
year of the Reform Bill. 

The opposition at first raised by William IV. and 
his Tory Ministry to Parliamentary Reform was, as 
is well known, overcome in 1830, the first year of 
his reign, and a Whig administration was formed by 
Earl Grey. The Bill brought into the House of 
Commons by Lord John Russell, as a member of 
this administration, in the following year, by which 
a number of rotten boroughs were disfranchised, and 
representation given to twenty-seven large towns, 
was thrown out and Parliament was dissolved. The 
new elections gave the Reform party the majority 
in the Lower House, but the Bill was again thrown 
out in the Upper. This time, however, its rejection 
raised such a storm in the country that, when it 
was brought in again, the Lords gave up their oppo- 
sition from the dread of seeing their influence anni- 
hilated by the creation of a number of new peers, 
and finally, on the 4th of June, 1832, the Reform 
Bill was passed, by which the number of British 

118 



First Political Campaigns. 119 

electors was raised from a practically small number 
to 300,000. 

Only a few days after this great event in Eng- 
land's modern political history, and before the first 
echoes of applause had died away — on the 13th of 
June, 1832 — Benjamin Disraeli made his entry into 
the little town of High Wycombe, for which, for the 
first time in his life, he had offered himself as a can- 
didate. True to his principle of attracting attention 
by his appearance, he drove, elegantly dressed, in 
an open carriage drawn by four horses, accompanied 
by a band of music and a troop of admirers with 
banners. He bowed to the spectators who thronged 
the windows, and when he reached the Red Lion, 
sprang from the carriage on to the porch, and made 
an animated speech an hour long, in which he 
lashed the Whigs with biting sarcasm — not that the 
Reform Bill was too liberal for him — it did not go 
far enough ; he came out as a full-blown Radical. 

In the works which he had published up to this 
time, there was no definite political creed, but they 
contained traces throughout of what may be called 
the Liberalism of a good fellow. The place for 
which he stood had hitherto been represented by 
Liberals with a dash of Radicalism ; being a very 
small borough, it was dependent on the Tory land- 
owners around ; but the Conservatives were in a 
decided minority, and it might be safely reckoned 



/ 



120 Lord Beaconsfield. 

that, as they hated the Reform administration, they 
would sooner vote for a Radical, who hated it also, 
than for a Liberal of the Ministerial stamp. Their 
organs also supported Disraeli. Politically unknown 
as he was, he had tried to add to his dignity by pro- 
curing letters of recommendation from the Radical 
Parliamentary leaders ; and really had two good 
letters from Joseph Hume and the famous Daniel 
O'Connell. He had them printed and posted up in 
High Wycombe. To his great mortification, Hume 
withdrew his letter at the last moment, apparently 
from distrust of Disraeli's political honesty, but he 
f still had O'Connell's powerful name as a guarantee. 
In his first election speech he came forward as a 
democratic plebeian. The Reform Bill was, in his 
view, not a definite step, only a means to a greater 
end. He hoped that reforms of every kind would 
arise out of it; but, above all other progress, he 
placed the improvement of the condition of the 
poor ; it was his principle that the happiness of the 
many was to be preferred to that of the few. He 
was the man of the people, for he had himself 
sprung from the people, and had not a drop of the 
Plantagenets or Tudors in his veins. He was glad 
to see the Tories for once on the side of the people ; 
the Tories must now rely on the people for support ; 
the people did not need to be supported by them. 
He spoke vehemently against long Parliaments, then 



First Political Campaigns. 121 

a standing topic with the Radicals, who desired 
triennial elections. 

Whether it was that Disraeli was regarded as a 
dangerous foe in Ministerial circles, or whether it 
was mere chance, the Prime Minister sent his own 
son, Colonel Grey, to High Wycombe, accompanied 
by two high officers of State, and the consequence 
was that Disraeli suffered his first defeat. The 
result was scarcely made known when he again 
ascended the hustings and made a speech, conclud- 
ing with the following words : " The Whigs have 
stood in my way, and they shall repent it " — the 
earliest public expression of the assurance with 
which Disraeli has always contrived at the moment 
of defeat to regain the mastery over his fate by a 
sarcasm, a threat, or a prophecy. 

The dissolution of Parliament during the same 
year occasioned Disraeli to offer himself the second 
time to the electors of High Wycombe. In a letter he 
addressed to them he speaks with great bitterness 
of the aristocratic Whig Ministry ; it had sought to 
gain popularity by the Reform Bill, but it had stood 
in the way of the rights of the people by not keeping 
its word about the ballot and triennial Parliaments. 
But his Radicalism, even here, is mixed with Tory 
sympathies ; he appeals to the fact that Lord 
Bolingbroke, " the cleverest statesman that ever 
lived/' was in favour of triennial Parliaments, and 
6 



122 Lord Beaconsficld. 

he defines his own political standpoint by the reason- 
able but somewhat trite saying that he was " a Con- 
servative to preserve all that is good in our Consti- 
tution, a Radical to remove all that is bad." * This 
cautious position gave him the name, among his 
opponents, of a Tory-Radical and Radical-Tory, and 
he was again defeated at the election. 

In order to understand Disraeli's first appearance 
as a politician, it must be borne in mind that the 
actual difference between the two contending aris- 
tocratic parties was very ill defined, and that, in 
spite of their efforts at reform, the Whigs had really 
but little claim to be considered a Liberal party on 
principle. Various circumstances had for a long 
period caused power to be divided between two Par- 
liamentary parties, who agreed on one point only, 
that they must be in power by turns. Among these 
circumstances were the combination of three estates 
in one empire, religious differences, the victory of 
the nobility over the Crown, and the peculiarity of 
the English aristocracy that it is constantly receiving 
reinforcements from the people, while, on the other 
hand, its younger sons are surrendered to the people 
again. Besides this, the opposition between them 
had taken various forms : sometimes it was Popery 
against Protestantism ; then Protestantism against 

* O'Connor's " Life of Lord Beaconsfield," p. 61. 



First Political Campaigns. 123 

religious liberty; now popular monarchy against 
oligarchy ; now warlike tendencies against love of 
peace ; national interests against cosmopolitanism ; 
the policy of letting things alone against reform, 
etc. At one time it was said, " The Tories believe 
in the divine right of kings, the Whigs in the divine 
right of the nobility ; " later on, that the Whigs were 
becoming Liberal in order to regain their lost power, 
the Tories in order to keep the power they had 
gained. It was after the year 1830 that the Tories 
first began to call themselves " Conservatives." The 
word, as the designation of a political party, is of 
modern date, and seems to have been first used in 
State papers which came from Russia, and preached 
" the solidarity of Conservative interests." It is not 
very happily chosen. To the question, Conservative 
or not Conservative ? there is really no rational an- 
swer but that of Disraeli's above quoted ; for there 
is no reasonable man who would not wish to see 
anything altered in a Constitution, nor any one so 
ultra-revolutionary that he would not desire per- 
manent institutions as the aim and end of change. 

It was at the time of the introduction of the 
terms " Conservative " and " Liberal," that the word 
" Radical " also acquired political significance. It is 
said to have been introduced for the first time by 
Pitt, in 1798, when he reproached the Opposition 
with desiring a " Radical " reform of Parliament. A 



124 Lord Beaconsfteld. 

Radical is one who, having adopted a principle as 
sound, will not agree to any stipulations respecting 
it. Radicalism therefore, could readily unite with 
the old party names in England. There were soon 
Radical-Tories as well as Radical-Whigs, that is, 
politicians of both parties who would agree to no 
compromise. Besides these, there was, of course, a 
Radical-Democratic party, who wished to see Eng- 
lish institutions remodelled after the American pat- 
tern, but who at that period generally contented 
themselves with such demands as secret voting and 
extension of the franchise, demands now nearly all 
conceded.* A sense of justicjfro less than an aver- 
sion to the middle classes, attracted Disraeli to the 
Radical group, whose prospects, during the demo- 
cratic tendency by which the nation was affected, 
did not seem unpromising. O'Connell, especially, 
was a power which every party had to take into 
account. 

When, in 1833, a vacancy seemed likely to occur 
in Marylebone, Disraeli offered himself as a candi- 
date for the third time. He sent a Radical address 
to the constituency, in which he called himself a 
scion of a family " untainted by the receipt of pub- 
lic money," and in which he — the future patron of 

* Respecting the names and position of parties in England about 
the time of the Reform Bill, see Lothar Bucher's instructive work, 
" Der Parlamentarismus, wie er est." 



First Political Campaigns. 125 

the landed interest — expressed a wish to see the 
whole system of taxation revised by a Parliamen- 
tary Committee, with a view to relieve manufactures 
of the burdens which the land was better fitted to 
bear. As the vacancy did not occur, Disraeli, in 
his eagerness to attract public attention, brought 
out his oft-discussed pamphlet, " What is He ? " 
which is generally, though incorrectly, said to have 
been his first step in the career of an author. It 
contained what he intended to have said in Maryle- 
bone, and appeared in 1833 ; for a long time it had 
disappeared from the world, and only now exists in 
an extract from a newspaper, and in a recently ac- 
quired copy in the British Museum. 

The title was singular enough. It is explained by 
the motto on the title-page, which apologizes for 
the notion of making your debut in politics by a book 
about yourself in the following way, certainly rather 

dragged in by the hair : " I hear that is again 

in the field. I do not know whether we ought 
to wish him success. What is he? — (Extract 
from a letter to an eminent personage)." The 
" eminent personage " was understood to be Lord 
Grey.* 

The pamphlet contains Disraeli's confession of 
faith as a Radical. He says that before the passing 

* O'Connor's " Life of Lord Beaconsfield," p. 67. 



126 Lord Beacons field. 

of the Reform Bill, the Government had, at any 
rate, the advantage of being based on a definite aris- 
tocratic principle ; but now it was based on none at 
all. A Tory and a Radical he could understand ; a 
Whig — a democratic aristocrat — he could not under- 
stand. The aristocratic principle had been over- 
turned for the present, not by the Reform Bill, but 
by the means by which it was carried ; if the Tories, 
indeed, despaired of restoring it, and if their asser- 
tion that the State cannot be governed by the exist- 
ing machinery be sincere, it was their duty to 
coalesce with the Radicals, and to let these two po- 
litical nicknames be merged into the common, in- 
telligible, and only dignified name of the national 
party. In conclusion, he must observe that there 
was yet a reason which induced him to believe that 
the restoration of the aristocratic principle in the 
Government of the country was utterly impractica- 
ble. For Europe was in a transition period from the 
feudal to the federative principle of government. 
The revolt of the Netherlands against Spain had 
hastened, if it had not provoked, the revolution in 
England under Charles I. ; the revolt of the Ameri- 
can colonies had hastened, if not provoked, the 
French Revolution ; the movement could not be 
checked. The question which now arises, is there- 
fore : Which is the easiest and most natural method 
" by which the democratic principle may be made 



First Political Campaigns, 127 

predominant?"* and the answer would be this: 
" Immediate abolition of septennial Parliaments, in- 
troduction of secret voting, and immediate dissolu- 
tion of Parliament." The condition of England was 
a melancholy one ; it would sometimes appear that 
the loss of our great colonial empire must be the 
consequence of our prolonged domestic discussions. 
Meanwhile we must place our hope and confidence 
in the national character, and in great men : " Let 
us not," he concludes, with his usual self-esteem, 
" forget also an influence, too much underrated in 
this age of bustling mediocrity — the influence of 
individual character. Great spirits may yet arise 
to guide the groaning helm through the world of 
troubled waters ; spirits whose proud destiny it may 
still be at the same time to maintain the glory of 
the empire, and to secure the happiness of the 
people ! " f 

The reader will recognize the doctrine of the tran- 
sition from the feudal to the federative principle 
in " The Revolutionary Epic;" he, perhaps, notes 
with surprise that Disraeli, the leader of the Tory 
aristocracy, began his career by declaring the period 
of government on the aristocratic principle to be at 
an end ; but in the uneasy glance cast upon Eng- 

* O'Connor's " Life of Lord Beaconsfield," p. 68. 
f " Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield : A Biography," vol. i. 
p. 102. 



128 Lord Beaconsfield. 

land's colonies, in his hatred of the Whigs, and the 
doctrine of the significance of great spirits, he will 
recognize fixed characteristics of the man. 

The political character of the following year was 
marked by the circumstance that the distress which 
had long prevailed among the farmers, reached such 
a height that the agriculturists appealed to the 
Government to take some measures for their relief, 
although they were beginning to despair of getting 
anything from the lethargic Whig Government. 
The Reform Ministry, once so popular, had become 
inert ; its members had one by one retired ; even 
the Prime Minister, Lord Grey, had been succeeded 
by Lord Melbourne, and he, too, had become an 
object of contempt. The Tory star was in the as- 
cendant ; their leader, Sir Robert Peel, was daily 
becoming more influential, and they took no further 
account of the Radicals, whom they no longer 
wanted. Meanwhile the landed interest was with- 
out a leader, or, to speak more correctly, they had 
only the Marquis of Chandos for their leader, a man 
destitute of ability. The result of this state of 
things was, as far as it concerned Disraeli, that he 
turned sharp round. He dropped his Radical de- 
mands, made approaches to the land party, drew 
up a petition to Parliament for them, and, finally, 
when the Whigs went out at the end of the year, he 
made a great advance towards the Tory side. In 



First Political Campaigns. 129 

December, 1835, he took part in a meeting at Ayles- 
bury, where he, who had said not long before that 
the manufacturing interest was thrust aside in favour 
of land, said that " He had long been of opinion 
that a conspiracy existed among certain orders in 
the country against what was styled the agricultural 
interest." * 

He spoke of the Marquis of Chandos with a 
warmth which strongly reminds one of Vivian Grey's 
enthusiasm for the Marquis of Carabas, and made 
use of expressions such as the following, in praise of 
his new party, which were certainly very much out 
of taste : that while no nation could prosper with- 
out agriculturists, for they, as bound to the land, are 
the special and born patriots, " the manufacturers 
of Birmingham and Manchester would, if it suited 
them at any time, migrate to Belgium, France, or 
Egypf't 

The broad, open-air style of the speech is the 
usual one for platform eloquence in the country, 
and prevails at the present day with English poli- 
ticians of all parties, but the tone of it will excite 
surprise. 

That same month Disraeli again came forward as 
a candidate for High Wycombe, with a long speech, 
which appeared in print under the title of " The 

* O'Connor's " Life of Lord Beaconsfield," p. 75. 
f Ibid. 

6* 



130 Lord Beaconsfield. 

Crisis Examined." It treats of the inevitable ne- 
cessity of reforms, financial, ecclesiastical, etc. ; but 
tries especially to gain over the constituency for the 
new Tory Government. He eagerly tries to refute 
the opinion that no reforms must be accepted from 
the hands of those who opposed the Reform Bill ; 
he even defends the party beforehand from the 
accusation of apostasy, if, after having opposed Re- 
form, they should now favour it. 

"The truth is, gentlemen/' said he, " a statesman 
is the creature of his age, the child of circumstances, 
the creation of his times. A statesman is essentially 
a practical character ; and when he is called upon 
to take office, he is not to inquire what his opinions 
might or might not have been upon this or that sub- 
ject — he is only to ascertain the needful, and the 
beneficial, and the most feasible manner in which 
affairs are to be carried on. ... I laugh, therefore, 
at the objections against a man, that, at a former 
period of his career, he advocated a policy different 
to his present one ; all I seek to ascertain is, whether 
his present policy be just, necessary, expedient ; 
whether he is at the present moment prepared to 
serve his country according to its present neces- 
sities."* 

It does not concern me to discuss the abstract 

* O'Connor's " Life of Lord Beaconsfield," p. 80. 



First Political Campaigns, ' 131 

correctness of this candid avowal, but it is interest- 
ing from a psychological point of view ; for you may 
be sure that a man who speaks thus is- contemplat- 
ing a political change of front. 

After the apologetic introduction in favour of the 

Tories, the pamphlet makes an attack on the late 

Ministry, of which a fragment deserves to be quoted, 

as a specimen of the political eloquence of young 

-Disraeli : — 

" The Reform Ministry ! I dare say now, some 
of you have heard of Mr. Ducrow, that celebrated 
gentleman who rides on six horses. What a pro- 
digious achievement ! It seems impossible, but you 
have confidence in Ducrow ! You fly to witness it. 
Unfortunately, one of the horses is ill, and a donkey 
is substituted in its place. But Ducrow is still ad- 
mirable : there he is, bounding along in spangled 
jacket and cork slippers ! The whole town is mad 
to see Ducrow riding at the same time on six horses. 
But now two more of the steeds are seized with the 
staggers, and lo ! three jackasses in their stead ! 
Still Ducrow persists, and still announces to the 
public that he will ride round his circus every night 
on his six steeds. At last all the horses are knocked 
up, and now there are half a dozen donkeys. What 
a change! Behold the hero in the amphitheatre, 
the spangled jacket thrown on one side, the cork 
slippers on the other. Puffing, panting, and per- 



132 Lord Bcaconsfield. 

spiring he pokes one sullen brute, thwacks another, 
cuffs a third, and curses a fourth, while one brays to 
the audience, and another rolls in the sawdust. Be- 
hold the late Prime Minister and the Reform Min- 
istry! The spirited and snow-white steeds have 
gradually changed into an equal number of sullen 
and obstinate donkeys, while Mr. Merryman, who, 
like the Lord Chancellor, was once the very life 
of the ring, now lies his despairing length in the 
middle of the stage, with his jokes exhausted, and 
his bottles empty." * 

The speech has that. sweeping, vehement, and en- 
tirely popular character which is expected on such 
occasions in England ; and yet one perceives in it 
the elaboration of the born author. Disraeli con- 
ducted his whole electioneering campaign with the 
same wit and spirit which appeared in this instance ; 
and yet he was again defeated for the third time. 
The consummate coolness with which he has always 
taken disasters of the kind did not desert him on 
this occasion. In a speech which he made a fort- 
night later, at a political dinner given in his honour, 
he said, with his usual sang-froid : " I am not at all 
disheartened. I don't in any way feel like a beaten 
man. Perhaps it is because I am used to it. I can 
say almost with the famous Italian general, who, 

* O'Connor's " Life of Lord Beaconsfield," p. 81. 



First Political Campaigns. 133 

being asked in his old age why he was always vic- 
torious, replied it was because he had always been 
beaten in youth." * 

This confidence in himself, which, in the midst of 
defeat, enables him to look forward to the laurels of 
future victories, is all the more interesting, because 
the year 1834, which was, politically, so unfortunate 
for Disraeli, also brought him ridicule and disaster 
in his literary character. It was in this year that 
the unlucky fragment of " The Revolutionary Epic " 
appeared ; it turned out to be a fiasco, and was even 
ridiculed in Parliament. However little poetical 
value may be attributed to the fragment, its fate is 
a striking instance of the cruel severity with which 
men who have contrived to make many enemies are 
judged if they once commit an unlucky mistake. 
Only fifty copies were first printed, and it was not 
until thirty years afterwards that the author allowed 
it to be republished, in order to put an end to fool- 
ish discussions about its contents, and yet in the 
mean time, this poem, which could scarcely be con- 
sidered as a publication, had played an important 
part in his life, and served, mostly to those who had 
never seen it, as an unfailing point of attack on 
the author. The reflections in " The Revolutionary 
Epic " were destitute of all simplicity and freshness, 

* "Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield," vol. i. p. 124. 



134 Lord Be aeons fie Id. 

and certainly could not attract any one ; the pathos 
was of that affected kind which sometimes makes 
Disraeli's fine writing so repulsive ; and the versifica- 
tion was but mediocre. It is. characteristic of the 
ambiguous political position of the author that the 
two first cantos are in direct opposition to each 
other, and sum up the respective merits of the feudal 
and federative systems. 

I mention a few characteristic features. In the 
first canto, the abstract idea of equality of the 
French Revolution is attacked on the ground that 
the character of a people is not manufactured, but 
slowly developed during a long course of time, the 
natural consequence of which is inequality. If the 
human race consisted of philosophers, equality would 
perhaps be possible ; but men, as they are, are gov- 
erned rather by imagination than by reason. In the 
second canto, the fearful consequences of tyranny 
and superstition are described ; knowledge, which is 
power, glorified ; and the praises sung of public 
opinion as the daughter of Lyridon, namely, of the 
federative principle. 

The fragment has no distinct ground idea ; it was 
undoubtedly intended to glorify the spirit of the 
modern era ; nevertheless, in spite of the revolution- 
ary title, it contains, as appears from the plan of it, 
many passages in favour of tradition, of hereditary 
aristocracy and monarchical power in true Tory 



First Political Campaigns. 135 

V 

style, and they almost seem like the forerunners of 
the lyrical effusions with which " Young England," 
Disraeli's subsequent noble body-guard, astonished 
the world. When he is reckoning up, for example, 
what constitutes a nation in contrast to a tribe, be- 
sides honour, justice, and patriotism, he says : — 

" In multitudes thus formed — 
A throne majestic yielding, and a band 
Of nobles dignified, and gentry pure, 
And holy priests, and. reverend magistrates ; 
In multitudes thus formed and highly trained 
Of laws and arts, and truthful prejudice 
And holy faith, the soul-inspired race, 
I recognize a People." 

Disraeli's many defeats were partly caused by 
the fact that nobody could find out exactly from 
"What is He?" what the author was, whether 
Radical or Tory, and he daily felt the necessity of 
decidedly taking one side or the other. So he 
passed the Rubicon, and went straight over into 
the Tory camp. He had previously put down his 
name for the Westminster Reform Club ; he now 
withdrew it. He had spoken in favour of secret 
voting, but, as this was opposed to the Tory pro- 
gramme, because the landowners would lose the 
power of tyrannizing over the small boroughs at the 
elections, he not only dropped it, but spoke against 
it. He had written against the tyranny of the State 
Church in Ireland ; he now demanded that it be re- 



136 Lord Beaconsfield. 

tained. He had sought O'Connell's protection ; he 
now tried to win his spurs' at his expense. 

In April, 1835, Peel was defeated in the House 
of Commons, and a Whig administration was again 
formed by Lord Melbourne. When a member of 
the new Ministry offered himself for re-election at 
Taunton, he was opposed by the indefatigable Dis- 
raeli, who in his speech on the occasion, tried to 
smooth over the change in his politics by an ap- 
parently ingenuous candour. He boasted of his 
political stedfastness, because of his unchanged op- 
position to the Whigs. If he no longer advocated 
certain measures, it was because, since the Tory 
party had recovered itself, they were no longer 
necessary. He had, for example, advocated secret 
voting in order to secure to the towns liberty to 
vote for members of the land party (!). They now 
no longer needed this protection. He spoke in 
favour of the Protestant Church in Ireland ; the 
outcry against it was very much exaggerated ; if 
this Church really was such an intolerable pest, why 
had it only just been discovered? He accused the 
Whigs, who supported the Irish demands, of en- 
couraging Ireland to " annihilate the Protestants." 
He bitterly reproached them with not having been 
ashamed to grasp O'Connell's bloody hand in order 
to enter into a league against the State Church, and 
when the expression, " bloody hand," was objected 



First Political Campaigns. 137 

to, he explained that he did not accuse Mr. O'Con- 
nell of entering parliament with bloody hands, but 
only maintained that his policy threatened the 
country with disruption, and could not be carried 
out without civil war. Now, it must be told that 
just four months before, in his published speech 
called "The Crisis Examined," Disraeli had said 
that " Twelve months must not be allowed to pass 
before even the word 'tithe' in that country (Ire- 
land) must be abolished." He had, indeed, then, as 
always afterwards, spoken against the entire aboli- 
tion of the Irish Church, because the plunder of a 
Church was always a benefit only to the aristocracy, 
but he would have had large concessions of all sorts 
made to the Dissenters; but now, when the Irish 
were in desperation, and the refusal to pay tithes 
had led to fearful massacres of men, women, and 
children, he took the side of the State Church out 
of opposition to the Whigs. 

When it is remembered that Disraeli made his 
first public appearance as O'Connell's protege 1 , the 
amazement and indignation of the great agitator 
will be readily imagined when, a few days after the 
election, he read Disraeli's expression about his 
" bloody hand " in a paper, in which the subsequent 
softening down of it was not even mentioned. At 
a meeting of the Irish Trades Union at Dublin, he 
answered it. In a speech, brimming over with 



138 Lord Beaconsfield. 

humour and contempt, O'Connell mentioned that 
this man had personally sought him out, and called 
himself a Radical ; as such had asked and obtained 
a letter of recommendation from him, and had so 
highly valued his autograph that he had had it 
printed and posted up as a placard ; and now he 
showed his gratitude by calling him a murderer and 
an incendiary. 

" Having been twice defeated on the Radical in- 
terest, he was just the fellow for the Conservatives. 
. . . How is he now engaged ? Why, in abusing 
the Radicals, and eulogizing the King and the 
Church like a true Conservative. . . . His life, I 
say again, is a living lie. . . . He is Conserva- 
tism personified. His name shows he is by descent 
a Jew. His father became a convert. He is the 
better for that in this world ; and I hope, of course, 
he will be the better for it in the next. There is 
a habit of underrating that great and oppressed 
nation, the Jews. They are cruelly persecuted by 
persons calling themselves Christians ; but no per- 
son ever yet was a Christian who persecuted. The 
cruelest persecution they suffer is upon their char- 
acter, by the foul names which their calumniators 
bestowed upon them before they carried their atro- 
cities into effect. They feel the persecution of 
calumny severer on them than the persecution of 
actual force and the tyranny of actual torture. I 



First Political Campaigns. 139 

have the happiness to be acquainted with some 
Jewish families in London, and amongst them, more 
accomplished ladies, or more humane, cordial, high- 
minded, or better-educated gentlemen, I have never 
met. It will not be supposed, therefore, that when 
I speak of Disraeli as the descendant of a Jew, I 
mean to tarnish him on that account. They were 
once the chosen people of God. There were miscre- 
ants amongst them, however, also, and it must have 
certainly been from one of those that Disraeli de- 
scended. He possesses just the qualities of the im- 
penitent thief who died upon the cross, whose name, 
I verily believe, must have been Disraeli. " * 

Just about the time when this speech was made, 
Morgan O'Connell had fought a duel for his father 
in London. A Lord Alvanley, thinking himself in- 
sulted by the agitator, had sent him a challenge ; 
and, as he had had the misfortune in his youth to 
kill an adversary in a duel, and had made a 'vow 
never to fight another, the son took up the chal- 
lenge given to his father. 

A few days after this duel, which terminated 
without injury to young O'Connell, Disraeli sent 
him a challenge on account of his father's speech in 
Dublin, as the only means of obtaining satisfaction. 



* " Benjamin Disraeli, M.P. : A Literary and Political Biog- 
raphy," p. 611. 



140 Lord Be aeons field. 

The challenge was refused, and on the very same 
day, Disraeli seized the pen and sent to the Times 
a letter to O'Connell, which, from its fierce indigna- 
tion and vigour of style, takes a high place among 
his political utterances. He begins by saying that, 
although his adversary had long placed himself 
beyond the pale of civilization, he (Disraeli) was 
determined not to suffer insult, even from a barba- 
rian, to go unpunished. The expression applied to 
O'Connell had been misunderstood and incorrectly 
reported. If it had been possible for O'Connell to 
act like a gentleman, he would have delayed his 
attack until he had ascertained with certainty what 
really had been said about him. O'Connell, not he, 
was the renegade, for he was now an ally of the 
Whigs, while he was, as before, their opponent on 
principle. He had never sought out O'Connell 
with any other programme but that the Whigs must 
be got rid of at any price, and to this programme 
he firmly adhered. The letter concludes with the 
following sneer at O'Connell's Irish pension, and 
with a vigorous threat : — " With regard to your 
taunts as to my want of success in my election con- 
tests, permit me to remind you that I had nothing 
to appeal to but the good sense of the people. No 
threatening skeletons canvassed for me ; a Death's 
head and cross-bones were not blazoned on my 
banners. My pecuniary resources, too, were limited. 



First Political Campaigns, 141 

I am not one of those public beggars that we see 
swarming with their obtrusive boxes in the chapels 
of your creed, nor am I in possession of a princely 
revenue arising from a starving race of fanatical 
slaves. Nevertheless, I have a deep conviction that 
the hour is at hand when I shall be more successful, 
and take my place in that proud assembly of which 
Mr. O'Connell avows his wish no longer to be a 
member. I expect to be a representative of the 
people before the Repeal of the Union. We shall 
meet again at Philippi ; and rest assured that, con- 
fident in a good cause, and in some energies which 
have not been altogether unimproved, I will seize 
the first opportunity of inflicting upon you a casti- 
gation which will make you at the same time re- 
member and repent the insults that you have lav- 
ished upon 

" Benjamin Disraeli." * 



* " Benjamin Disraeli, M.P. : A Literary and Political Biography," 
p. 617. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE "VINDICATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITU- 
TION." 

When Disraeli, in the summer of 1835, looked 
back on his three years' political campaign, he had 
little reason to feel satisfaction in it. He had 
achieved but little more than to attract attention as 
a political aspirant, atid he had suffered many hu- 
miliations, losses, and defeats. It was not easy to 
work in the political coal-mine without soiling your 
fingers, but when he looked at his hands, he could 
not but discover that they were very much soiled in 
a very short time, and even his face was not free 
from spots. He did not feel guilty about O'Con- 
nell, for when he sought his support, O'Connell had 
not come out with his most thoroughgoing inten- 
tions — he had not advocated the Repeal of the 
Union, the abolition of the State Church, or of the 
House of Lords ; still, he felt the necessity of clear- 
ing himself in his own eyes and those of his fellows, 
of making the political system which he meant to 
advocate in the future, plain to himself and others ; 
and after solitary reflection, and interviews with 

142 



"Vindication of the English Constitution" 143 

Lord Lyndhurst and other eminent Tory" leaders, 
he began to put down his thoughts in the form of 
a letter to that statesman, and gave it the rather 
pompous title of " Vindication of the English Con- 
stitution, in a Letter to a Noble and Learned Lord, 
by Disraeli the Younger." 

Various elements combined to give rise to the 
production of this political sketch ; annoyance at his 
own mistakes, and the need of giving guarantees by 
an open confession, hastened the project ; youthful 
sympathies, and early imbibed antipathies, with re- 
cent experiences, combined to furnish the contents. 
With all the passionate energy of his nature, Disraeli 
was deeply chagrined at the political vacillation of 
which he had been guilty. He had imagined it pos- 
sible to assume an independent position outside the 
two old aristocratic parties ; this had not proved to 
be possible, and he now desired, with all the vigour 
and persistency of which he was capable, to join the 
Tories, to take a side in such a way as to leave no 
doubt as to which side he had taken. But at the 
same time, it was his decided wish to reserve his 
political liberty, and he was, therefore, by no means 
disposed to accept the existing Tory policy as a 
dogma. Having found it impossible to make his 
way as a Radical, he desired, as far as possible, to 
carry over the Radical tendencies with him to the 
Tory camp, and he asserted that the greater part of 



144 Lord Beacons field. 

what were considered the essentials of the Tory- 
cause, were in reality only excrescences of it. Now 
that the prospect was at an end of forming a great 
national party out of Radicals and Tories combined, 
which he had advocated at High Wycombe, his ob- 
ject was to prove that the Tory party, if Toryism 
were taken in its true sense, was this liberal and 
national party. His task, therefore, in the future, 
must be to lead the party back to its principles.* 

The " Vindication of the English Constitution " 
begins, as might be expected from the author of 
" Popanilla," with a fierce attack on Bentham and 
his school. Disraeli teaches that legislation cannot 
possibly be based upon utilitarianism, and ridicules 
the cognate principle of the greatest happiness of 
the greatest number as a criterion by which to judge 
it ; not like the Pessimist of to-day, for he does not 
believe in the possibility of happiness at all — men 
like Disraeli are born ultra-Optimists — but he 
adopted the usual arguments of the historic school. 
Institutions must grow up by degrees and be altered 
by degrees ; they are the outcome of the national 
character as a whole, and as such cannot be trans- 
formed in a day ; the system which suits one coun- 
try does not suit another, etc. — truths which were by 

* An opponent of Disraeli's has epigrammatically said : " We all 
know that Mr. Disraeli has never believed that the function of Con- 
servatism is to conserve." 



"Vindication of the English Constitution." 145 

no means overlooked by Bentham, when he placed 
the rights of the public good above those of ancient 
usage. 

The " Vindication of the English Constitution " 
is a defence of its traditional aristocratic principle. 
Disraeli's first object is to repel the attacks on the 
House of Lords common at that time. He at- 
tempts, therefore, to point out the harmony be- 
tween the principles on which both Houses are 
based, so as to defend the Lords from the charge 
of being an anomaly. He tries to prove, first, that 
the Upper House is not less representative than 
the elective Lower House ; and, secondly, that the 
latter, though not to the same extent, is based on 
the hereditary principle like the other. 

He declares that it is untrue to say that the rep- 
resentative and aristocratic principles are opposed 
to each other; it is untrue to speak of the Commons 
as the popular House, as opposed to the Lords as 
aristocratic. For both Houses are composed, so 
long as universal suffrage is not a part of the Con- 
stitution, of the privileged classes ; both are at once 
popular and representative. The proof is adduced, 
premising that the chain of reasoning is condensed, 
in the following bold style : — Representation is not 
dependent on elections ; a chamber may be repre- 
sentative without being elective (as, for example, 
the Press represents interests and ideas, although 
7 



146 Lord Beaconsfield. 

journalists are not elected). In the House of Lords, 
for instance, the bishops represent the Church, and 
they having often (?) risen from the lowest ranks of 
the people, " form the most democratic element 
among the many popular elements in the Upper 
House." The whole difference, then, between the 
two Houses consists in the great difference between 
the number of members in the two political classes 
from which they spring. The one is a privileged 
class of 300,000 persons, who are represented by 
delegates, because they are too numerous to appear 
in person, the other is a privileged class of 300 no- 
bles, who attend in person. 

Having demonstrated the popular character of 
the Upper House in this remarkable manner, Dis- 
raeli proceeds to discover the hereditary principle in 
the composition of the Lower. He is of opinion 
that this principle of hereditary legislature is the 
principle on which the English Constitution has 
been upreared, and to which it owes its strength in 
comparison with the impracticable paper constitu- 
tion of the Continent, particularly of France. Ev- 
erybody knows that the Upper House is an assem- 
bly where the right to make laws is hereditary, but 
it is overlooked that in the Lower House the right 
to elect legislators is scarcely less hereditary, that 
practically, if not nominally, the heredity of the 
legislative office is the rule ; the representative of 



"Vindication of the English Constitution." 147 

a county is invariably chosen from one of the first 
families of the county, and ten years after his elec- 
tion he, as invariably, leads his son to the hustings, 
and commends him to the confidence of the con- 
stituency, so that he succeeds to his father — he 
enters on his inheritance. 

Thus, then, it is demonstrated that the Lower 
House is the House of a privileged class, based upon 
inheritance, and that the Upper House is not an 
aristocratic, but a representative, and in many re- 
spects democratic, assembly ; and next Disraeli 
passes on, with a light heart, to his favourite theme, 
the mischief done by the Whig party. He seeks to 
prove that the Venetian Republic has for a long 
period served the Whigs as a model, and that since 
the English Revolution they have persistently car- 
ried out their plan of robbing the King of his rights, 
and reducing him from an English sovereign to the 
position of a Doge of Venice. Their aim has ever 
been to establish an oligarchy which should abso- 
lutely govern the Crown and people. Their watch- 
ward, it is true, is civil and religious liberty, but by 
civil liberty they mean that the sovereign shall be a 
doge, and by religious liberty that the State Church 
shall be abolished for the benefit of the fanatical 
Puritanism with which it has allied itself. The 
Tories, on .the contrary, who felt compelled to adopt 
the 'unpopular watchword, "the kingdom by the 



148 Lord Beaconsfield. 

grace of God," were originally the really Liberal 
party, who wished to secure their rights to the peo- 
ple by upholding the power of the sovereign. The 
watchwords had quickly become antiquated, the 
Tory party held more, the Whigs less, popular and 
liberal views than would be supposed from their 
party cries, and thus it had been rendered possible, 
even at the beginning of the eighteenth century, for 
the Tory party to undergo a regeneration similar to 
that which was now taking place. The portraiture 
of the statesman to whom it owed this reorganiza- 
tion, Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, Disraeli's 
extolled political ideal, is highly interesting, for it 
obviously contains confessions as well as promises, 
and an attempt at a description of himself : — 

" In the season of which I am treating, arose a 
man remarkable in an illustrious age, who, with the 
splendour of an organizing genius, settled the con- 
fused and discordant materials of English faction, 
and reduced them into a clear and systematic order. 
This was Lord Bolingbroke. Gifted with that fiery 
imagination, the teeming fertility of whose inventive 
resources is as necessary to a great statesman or a 
great general as to a great poet," he was " the ablest 
writer and the most accomplished orator of his age, 
that rare union that, in a country of free Parliaments 
and a free Press, ensures to its possessor the privi- 
lege of exercising a constant influence over the mind 



" Vindication of the English Constitiition." 149 

of his country. . . . Opposed to the Whigs from 
principle, for an oligarchy is hostile to genius, . . . 
it is probable that in the earlier years of his career 
he meditated over the formation of a new party — 
that dream of youthful ambition in a perplexed and 
discordant age, but destined in English politics to 
be never, more substantial than a vision. More ex- 
perienG&a in political life, he became aware that he 
had only to choose between the Whigs and the 
Tories, and his sagacious intellect, not satisfied with 
the superficial character of these celebrated divi- 
sions, penetrated their interior and essential qualities, 
and discovered, in spite of all the affectation of popu- 
lar sympathy on one side, and of admiration of arbi- 
trary power on the other, that this choice was in fact 
a choice between oligarchy and democracy. From 
the moment that Lord Bolingbroke, in becoming a 
Tory, embraced the national cause, he devoted him- 
self absolutely to his party : all the energies of his 
Protean mind were lavished in their service. . . . 
It was his inspiring pen . . . that eradicated from 
Toryism all those absurd and odious doctrines which 
Toryism had adventitiously adopted, and clearly 
developed its essential and permanent character." * 
Bolingbroke wrote a work called " A Patriot 
King," in which he suggests that the king and the 

*Hitchman's "Public Life of the Earl of Beaconsfield," vol. i. 
p. 113. 



150 Lord Beacons field. 

Tory aristocracy should unite with the masses, in 
order to suppress the Whigs and the middle classes. 
Disraeli's pamphlet suggests something very similar. 
He was, by nature, half popular tribune, half cour- 
tier. His sympathies went with the poverty of the 
people, and the splendour of the throne. A less 
bourgeois, or bourgeois-aristocratic, character can 
scarcely be conceived. As his daemonic ambition 
now compelled him to make choice between the 
Tories and Whigs, he decided for the Tories, and at 
the moment of choice turned it into an advocacy of 
an alliance between the Crown and the masses, so 
that it thus became an expression of his own native 
sympathies. 



CHAPTER XI. 

"VENETIA" AND "HENRIETTA TEMPLE." 

DISRAELI was now over thirty, and the years be- 
tween thirty and forty are generally the most pro- 
ductive for creative minds, in every sphere of action. 
The sun of passion is then in the sign of the Lion, 
and the mind is comprehensive enough to embrace 
thirst for action as well as visionary fancies. Before 
the age of thirty, much time is lost in frivolity and 
indecision — you fancy that there is time enough and 
to spare. After forty, imagination is often quenched 
by active life, which calls all the powers into requisi- 
tion. But in these early years of mature manhood, 
the mind is both young and old enough to exercise 
the creative and practical faculties at the same time. 

While Disraeli was keeping the political public in 
a state of constant excitement by a series of anony- 
mous articles in favour of and against English states- 
men, which were published in the Times under the 
title of " Letters from Runnymede," and while he 
was involved in a fierce controversy with the Globe 
newspaper, in consequence of numerous accusations 
of political treachery, he withdrew into the more 
peaceful arena of fiction, and wrote the only two of 

151 



152 Lord Beaconsfield. 

his novels in which there is but a faint trace of poli- 
tics, " Venetia" and " Henrietta Temple." 

" Venetia " is a very peculiar book, a mixture of 
imagination and reality, to which even Disraeli's 
novels offer no parallel ; it is an attempt to treat of 
characters and circumstances in the form of a ro- 
mance, with whom and with which the whole first 
generation of readers were contemporary, and they 
are still so well known that the reader always feels 
put out and confused when historical truth ceases 
and fiction begins. 

Considering how deep an impression Byron had 
made upon Disraeli, it will be readily understood 
that he took the misunderstanding of the great poet 
much to heart. He saw with regret that, long after 
Byron's death, the old narrow-minded and bigoted 
condemnation of him still prevailed in English good 
society, so called, and he made up his mind to do 
away with it. That his private life had not been so 
blameless and brilliant as his public career, was a 
circumstance which, in Disraeli's eyes, need not 
lessen his reputation in the eyes of posterity. It is 
even characteristic of Disraeli that, with a freedom 
from prejudice very rare in England, he has always 
pronounced those men to be great or eminent whose 
distinguished qualities the crowd, with their petty 
bourgeois moralizings, were disposed to overlook, on 
account of failings in their private life, as, for in- 



"Venetia" and "Henrietta Temple." 153 

stance, Lord Bolingbroke, Lord Byron, and Count 
d'Orsay. The study of Byron seems to have led 
Disraeli to the study of Shelley, from which it is in- 
separable ; and although Shelley's ethereal nature 
was less congenial to him than Byron's tempestuous 
power, his deep occupation with these contempora- 
neous spirits led him to embrace both in his creative 
enthusiasm. He wanted to write a book which 
should gain the admiration of their countrymen for 
their two great sons, which should regain for Byron 
the hearts which he had lost, and open people's eyes 
to what they had possessed in Shelley, and had, with 
cruel folly, thrown away. In the centre of the book 
he places a young girl, a beautiful character, from 
her innocence and latent energy, modest and high- 
minded ; she is a link between the two great men, 
for she is Shelley's daughter and . Byron's fiance'e. 
He divides Byron's life into two halves ; the greater 
part of the incidents of his career — his gloomy child- 
hood, his relations with his unwise mother, his first 
success as a poet in London and his deification there, 
his relations with Lady Caroline Lamb, and the fall 
from being a lion to a scapegoat — he attributes to 
Plantagenet Cadurcis, a young man whom he en- 
dowed with all the essentials of Byron's character 
and tendencies.* Other equally well-known inci- 

* Compare G. Brandes, " Die Hauptstromungen in der Literatur 
des 19 Jahrhunderts," vol. iv. p. 395. 

7* 



154 Lord Beacons field, 

dents of Byron's fate — the unfortunate marriage, the 
separation soon after the birth of a daughter — he 
attributed to the elder poet and hero, who is ideally 
handsome, and enthusiastic for reform, Marmion 
Herbert, to whom he gave Shelley's character and 
genius. Lady Byron, very much idealized, is Shel- 
ley's deserted wife, which is confusing, and the 
young lady whose position agrees with that of 
Byron's daughter Ada, is Byron's playfellow and 
Shelley's daughter — you have to pay close attention 
in reading the book to keep the relationships clear. 
And yet it was a success. In spite of its violation 
of all aesthetic rules, it is a beautiful, impassioned, 
and spirited book; a good genius presides over it, 
and a waft of liberty flutters through its pages. 

Venetia is the name given by Disraeli to the 
heroine, in honour of the city in Europe dearest to 
his heart, and of which both Byron and Shelley were 
very fond. She is brought up, without knowing her 
history, by a mother who lives in retirement, and 
without venturing to ask the name of her unknown 
father, though she conjectures that he is still living. 
She one day enters a room which had always been 
kept locked, sees Marmion Herbert's life-sized por- 
trait, is struck by its supernatural beauty, finds 
verses which he had written in his joy at her birth, 
and begins secretly to idealize her unknown fathers 
The playmate of her childhood, Lord Cadurcis, 



"Venetia" and u Henrietta Temple" 155 

Byron's alter ego, who had been brought up in the 
narrowest and most rigid Tory notions of that day, 
offers her his hand ; and Venetia, although she likes 
him, replies to his proposals by expressing her de- 
sire above all things to live for her father. His 
wounded pride causes him to heap reproaches on 
Herbert's name; he calls Herbert, that is, Shelley, 
" a man whose name is synonymous with infamy ; " 
in short, he gives vent to his feelings against free- 
thinkers, republicans, and immoral people in gen- 
eral. Venetia's anger is roused, and she ♦ answers : 
"Passionate and ill-mannered boy! words cannot 
express the disgust and the contempt with which 
you inspire me." * 

Years go by; the young lord comes to London, 
sees life with the eye of genius, and all his foolish 
prejudices and theological absurdities fall from his 
eyes like scales. He finds Marmion Herbert's po- 
ems, reads them with amazement, enthusiasm, and 
admiration, becomes his sworn disciple, and would 
sooner outdo him than shrink from the consequences 
which the great exile has brought upon himself. 

When himself compelled to turn his back upon 
England, he meets with Herbert in Italy, wins his af- 
fection and Venetia's love. Herbert and his wife are 
reconciled. The paradisaical happiness, which seems 

* "Venetia," p. 201. 



156 Lord Beacons field. 

to be dawning for everybody, is destroyed by the 
catastrophe of the book ; the fate of Shelley befalls 
both the great poets. They go to the bottom, with 
their yacht, in a voyage near the coast of Tuscany. 

It is interesting to note that this is the first sub- 
ject which charms our new Tory convert. Is it not 
perfectly clear that he wished, after his fierce politi- 
cal struggles, to plunge into the pure waters of 
poesy, and to convince the world and himself that, 
by going over to the Tories, he had in no wise 
pledged himself to the narrowness and hypocrisy 
of the "stupid party"? He reserved his right to 
contemn Byron's notorious Tories as much as he 
contemned them, to extol the unselfish philan- 
thropy and world-embracing poetic mind of the 
Pantheistic Shelley, though he was still looked upon 
by the Whig champions of religious liberty as a 
hybrid between a madman and a criminal. Was it 
also a satisfaction to him, just as he had made, for 
political reasons, the transition from Radicalism to 
Toryism, to describe how a richly endowed genius 
had made the transition from the narrowest and 
early imbibed Toryism to the most large-hearted 
and advanced Radicalism ? I have an idea that he 
felt that it tended to restore his mental equilibrium ; 
an equilibrium which, perhaps, with men of passion- 
ate natures, is easily disturbed, but which every one 
involuntarily seeks to preserve. 



"Venetia" and "Henrietta Temple." 157 

The romance of " Venetia " is a masterpiece of 
tact : it conducts the case of the two unjustly exiled 
men, without coming into too close quarters with 
any living person ; it transfigures Lady Byron into 
a highly poetic being, though it fervently advocates 
Byron's cause ; it does not condemn a single one of 
the enemies of the two poets, only the " despicable 
coterie," -which had taken upon itself to represent 
England, and had driven Byron into exile in Eng- 
land's name, and had thus misled him into hurling 
his darts at his country, instead of at this miserable 
coterie alone ; it is only on Lord Melbourne, hus- 
band of Lady Caroline, that a somewhat comical 
light is thrown, but he was purposely selected as a 
victim, being then the Whig Prime Minister. 

Further, " Venetia " is a poetical work : it was a 
fine idea to allot to a woman, a young, pure, strong- 
hearted girl, the part of mediator, first between 
Byron and Shelley, and then between them both 
and the English people. With her brightness and 
golden hair, she comes before us as the dauntless 
genius of love, understanding all, forgiving all, and 
blotting out with her finger the stains in the lives of 
the two men of splendid genius, whom she adores 
and admires as daughter and fiancee. " Venetia " is 
the only one of Disraeli's romances in which he has 
introduced lyrics of no small value, for his verses 
generally leave much to be desired. The poem 



158 Lord Beaconsfield. 

which Marmion Herbert writes on the night when 
Venetia was born, is particularly successful ; it is 
not altogether unworthy of Shelley — certainly very 
high praise. 

Finally, " Venetia " is a fine piece of psychologi- 
cal criticism. The portraiture of the two poets is, 
on the whole, as spirited as it is correct ; even their 
less conspicuous works, as, for example, Shelley's 
Essays, are introduced with great skill, and Shelley's 
influence on Byron is demonstrated with much pen- 
etration. There is a charming and truly Byronic hu- 
mour in the passages where Byron acknowledges his 
plagiarism from Shelley, and laughingly confesses 
that he did not always quite understand what yet 
appeared to him so beautiful that he appropriated 
it. At the same time, it cannot be denied that we 
have only a sketch of Shelley, and not the finer 
physiognomical features. Byron is a spirit with 
whom Disraeli feels on the same level ; Shelley was 
too ethereal for him ; and his portraits were nat- 
urally successful in proportion as he comprehended 
his subjects. There is a conversation in " Venetia " 
in which a good old Tory bishop compares the two 
men : " H^ (Cadurcis) is of the world, worldly. 
All his works, all his conduct, tend only to astonish 
mankind." * 

* "Venetia," p. 269. 



"Venetia" and "Henrietta Temple" 159 

There is some truth in this, only that a bit of 
Byron is cut out and made into a whole, the bit 
which Disraeli has in common with him. When 
Lady Herbert fears that Cadurcis, who is also cast 
out from society, will end like Herbert, the bishop 
answers : " He is not prompted by any visionary 
ideas of ameliorating his species. The instinct of 
self-preservation will serve him as ballast." * 

In these words, which are only given by the 
author as a bishop's narrow conception of Byron, 
we perceive, with a little alteration, a characteristic 
of Disraeli himself. He unites in himself the quali- 
ties which are divided between his heroes — the 
visionary ideas and the making an idol of self. 
When writing this book, he was inspired by the 
great humanitarian visions which had pursued him 
from West to East and back. These visions enabled 
him to understand Shelley ; on the other hand, he 
was animated by ardent personal ambition and de- 
sire for political power, and through these qualities 
he felt himself akin to Byron. But there was a third 
element in him, an element which cannot be said to 
have belonged to either of the great men with whose 
destinies he was occupied ; this was the instinct of 
self-preservation, which is incorrectly ascribed to 
Cadurcis by the bishop, for Byron was far from pos- 

*"Venetia,"p. 269. 



160 Lord Beacons field. 

sessing this trait ; it has certainly always served to 
prevent Disraeli from making shipwreck on his way 
to port with his day's work half done, long and 
stormy as the voyage may have been. 

" Henrietta Temple," the other novel written at 
this time, has for its second title, " A Love Story," 
and it is an appropriate one. In this book the 
author has for once given the reins to this passion 
as he knew and felt it. He had, of course, treated 
of it in all his novels, for a romance without love 
is like a goblet without wine ; but he had not, before 
writing " Henrietta Temple," made it the main top- 
ic. In Disraeli's manner of writing about women 
and love, three stages may be noticed. In his early 
youth, in " The Young Duke," he shows keen obser- 
vation and freshness, much insight and surpassing 
irony; in his manhood, he depicts the ardent, ad- 
miring love of two young creatures, and, strongly 
affected by it himself, breaks forth into a song of 
praise in honour of Eros ; in the third stage, woman 
is to him a higher, more representative being than 
man — she is the symbol of a great idea, and he 
describes her, and love for her, in the appropriate 
spirit, that of reverent tenderness. Thus Sybil 
represents the people and the Church ; Eva, in 
" Tancred," Judaism and the East ; Theodora, in 
" Lothair," Italy and national liberty. But through 
all these stages, there runs, as the most essential 



"Venetia" and "Henrietta Temple." 161 

feature, a growing, thoroughly English idealism. 
There is in this idealism obviously something in- 
born — the home of his soul was rather the inspired 
East of the Arab than the luxurious East of Hafiz 
— but there was still more that was acquired by 
adaptation to his surroundings. He was not origin- 
ally wanting in sensuous fancy ; he had a keen eye 
for colour, betrayed equally in delight in the con- 
trast between the hue of the lobster and the white- 
ness of the flounder at a fishmonger's, or the play of 
the diamonds on a lady's neck at a ball ; but he had 
not enough of nature in him, he lived too perpet- 
ually in abstract plans and schemes, to be able to 
distil a beautiful or poetic side from sensuous life. 
He does not once describe sensuous attraction as 
an element in love, not even as an idealist might 
describe it, with unimpassioned truthfulness, far less 
with poetical appreciation of this force of nature. 
For he desires, above all things, to be read by the 
general public ; to be a drawing-room author, recom- 
mended by a mother to her daughter. He there- 
fore allows the great naturalistic movement in Eng- 
lish poetry to rush past him without learning any- 
thing essential from it. He appropriates nothing 
of Wordsworth's feeling for nature, nothing of the 
sensuous richness of Keats, nothing of Byron's 
original native force, which cast propriety to the 
winds. The stages which I have indicated in Dis- 



1 62 Lord Beacons field. 

raelfs treatment of love, are stages in the progress 
of a drawing-room author, and show rather his ten- 
dency to bring himself into accord with the spirit of 
the age and English taste, than the development of 
talent independent of the external world. This is 
one of the many instances of his adroitness in con- 
forming to English manners and English notions of 
propriety, notwithstanding that he is, to a certain 
extent, un-English. 

Under George IV. frivolity was the mode; conse- 
quently, in " The Young Duke," Disraeli touches 
with a bolder and freer hand than he ever did af- 
terwards the various mental and other conditions 
which result from frivolous or illegitimate love. 
The delineation of it is clever and in extremely 
good taste ; the critical passages are passed over in 
jest or in a tragi-comic style. Still, erotic indiscre- 
tions have a place here, and are not, as afterwards, 
systematically excluded from the life of the hero. 
By his subsequent strictness, he has injured himself 
as a fictitious writer. He had a tone of delicate 
and indulgent irony in treating of such phenomena, 
which, occasionally introduced, would have had a 
good effect in the somewhat overstrained pathos of 
his later love stories. I give a few lines from the 
scene in which Lady Aphrodite, the duke's beloved, 
breaks to him her fears that he is tired of his rela- 
tions with her. 



"Venetia" and "Henrietta Temple." 163 

" Out dashed all those arguments, all those ap- 
peals, all those assertions, which they say are usual 
under these circumstances. She was a woman ; he 
was a man. She had staked her happiness on this 
venture ; he had a thousand cards to play. Love, 
and first love, with her, as with all women, was 
everything; he and all men, at the worst, had a 
thousand resources. He might plunge into politics, 
he might game, he might fight, he might ruin him- 
self in innumerable ways, but she could only ruin 
herself in one. Miserable woman ! Miserable sex ! 
She had given him her all. She knew it was little ; 
would she had more ! She knew she was unworthy 
of him ; would she were not ! She did not ask him 
to sacrifice himself to her ; she could not expect it ; 
she did not even desire it. Only, she thought he 
ought to know exactly the state of affairs and of 
consequences, and that certainly if they were parted, 
which assuredly they would be, most decidedly she 
would droop and fade and die." * 

There is a good bit of psychology concealed be- 
neath the irony of this description. 

In " Henrietta Temple," love is treated in a to- 
tally different style. The praises of love are sung, 
its omnipotence is gravely described, and it is 
young, innocent love, sure of itself. All the diffi- 

* " Young Duke," p. 176. 



164 Lord Beaconsfteld. 

culties with which it has to contend come from 
without, and do not finally separate the lovers. 
Captain Armine, the only son of a noble but poor 
family, is leading the reckless life of a man of fash- 
ion in Malta, and discovers one fine day that he is 
disinherited, and that his beautiful young cousin is 
heiress of all the wealth on which he had reckoned, 
and with which he meant to pay his debts. He 
comes to England, sees his cousin, finds her amia- 
ble, and has only to show himself, handsome and 
manly as he is, to become the object of her warm 
affections, for she is a girl who has not seen much 
of the world. His parents and those around him 
urge him on ; the thought of debt and dishonour is 
a still stronger motive, and Armine engages himself, 
without a spark of love for her, to Katherine Grand- 
ison. No sooner is he engaged than he meets with 
Henrietta Temple, a young girl without fortune, 
whose beauty and charms captivate him at first 
sight, and his sole desire is, if possible, to win her 
hand. In this Disraeli illustrates the theory he has 
always held about the origin of love, and it entirely 
concurs with his deeply rooted prejudice in favour 
of sudden surprises and striking effects. He says : 
" There is no love but love at first sight. . . . All 
other is the illegitimate result of observation, of 
reflection, of compromise, of comparison, of expedi- 
ency." 



"Venetia" and "Henrietta Templet 165 

In this kind of love he tells us we " feel our 
flaunty ambition fade away like a shrivelled gourd 
before her vision ; " fame seems to us " a juggle, and 
posterity a lie." * 

How striking are these words in a psychological 
aspect ! In order to give an idea of the strength of 
the erotic sentiment, Disraeli compares it with the 
strongest passion with which he is acquainted — am- 
bition, and allows love for a moment to triumph 
over it. And he continually applies this standard 
to it. In another passage in " Henrietta Temple " 
he says, for example : " Revolutions, earthquakes, 
the change of governments, the fall of empires, are 
to him but childish games, distasteful to a manly 
spirit." f 

The repeated assertion that the heart, when in 
love, does not beat for politics, betrays that Disraeli 
is here speaking from personal experience. And 
" Henrietta Temple " is altogether a book that 
speaks from the heart. It may be that sighs and 
groans, superlatives and / or tisszmos, are rather super- 
abundant. It becomes the author well, who is so 
fond of representing temporary political party ques- 
tions as the great questions for the human race, to 
condescend to the common interests of mankind, 
and not to be above stenographing for us the talk 

* " Henrietta Temple," p. 78. f Ibid. p. 137. 



1 66 Lord Beaconsfield. 

of two lovers, or showing us their tenderly affection- 
ate letters. It is in the courage exhibited in steno- 
graphing the language of love precisely as it is, 
without any dressing up by the author, that the 
originality of the novel consists. It might have been 
supposed that in a " book of love," by a writer like 
Disraeli, we might have been treated with a mere 
love of the head, with pure admiration on the part 
of the young lady for the intellect of her lover ; but 
Disraeli knows human nature too well to fill his 
book with such counterfeits. It has warmth and 
soul, and the intrigue is touched with the light, firm 
hand of a politician. 

Still, although it is said to be the strongest evi- 
dence of true love when it makes a man forget his 
ambitious schemes, this first symptom is never de- 
scribed as permanent. ' The lasting effect of love 
upon the mind of a man is, as he represents it, and 
as was to be expected from him, just the contrary — 
to inspire him and spur him on to action. He says 
somewhere in " Henrietta Temple : " — 

" Few great men have flourished, who, were they 
candid, would not acknowledge the vast advantages 
they have experienced in the earlier years of their 
career from the spirit and sympathy of woman. It 
is woman whose prescient admiration strings the 
lyre of the desponding poet whose genius is after- 
wards to be recognized by his race, and which often 



"Venetia" and "Henrietta Temple" 167 

embalms the memory of the gentle mistress whose 
kindness solaced him in less glorious hours. How 
many an official portfolio would never have been 
carried, had it not been for her sanguine spirit and 
assiduous love ! How many a depressed and de- 
spairing advocate has clutched the Great Seal, and 
taken his precedence before princes, borne onward 
by the breeze of her inspiring hope, and illumined 
by the sunshine of her prophetic smile ! A female 
friend, amiable, clever, and devoted, is a possession 
more valuable than parks and palaces ; and, without 
such a Muse, few men can succeed in life, few be 
content."* 

It is entirely in agreement with this that, in Dis- 
raeli's novels, the heroine has generally some keen 
political interest, a cause in which she has faith, for 
which she lives, which fires her with ardour, and 
which her lover is to advocate in Parliament. If the 
question is asked in Disraeli's novels : " Which is 
the happiest and proudest moment in a man's life?" 
the answer will be : " It is the moment when he sur- 
prises his lady love while reading the speech he 
made the day before amidst general applause in 
Parliament." It is in this situation that the young 
duke surprises May Dacre, and Charles Egremont 
the enthusiastic Sybil ; and this situation may well 

* " Henrietta Temple," p. 173. 



1 68 Lord Beacons field. 

be said to be the happiest moment for Disraeli 
himself. 

How ardently he must have looked forward to 
the moment when this bliss, or at least the possi- 
bility of it, should be granted him ! How near it 
had often seemed, and then had again eluded his 
grasp ! One more attempt must be made, one 
more, to cross that inhospitable threshold, on the 
other side of which lay the path to happiness and 
power. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE MAIDEN SPEECH. 

In the year 1837 Disraeli published both " Vene- 
tia" and "Henrietta Temple," and in July of the 
same year he offered himself as a candidate for 
Maidstone, with Mr. Wyndham Lewis, who was of 
the same party ; Lewis was not a man of any talent, 
but was very wealthy, and had contributed ,£600 to 
Disraeli's expenses when he last offered himself as 
a candidate. His address to the electors is in the 
purest Tory style, but it is characteristic that, to- 
gether with the old Conservative expressions about 
the glory of the State Church, etc., there is the most 
vehement condemnation of the Whigs' new Poor 
Law ; it is called a crime against morality as well 
as a political folly ; indeed, these violent outbreaks 
have almost a socialistic character. Disraeli gives 
as the reason of his opposition that the law was 
based upon an erroneous conception of the rights of 
the people. The Whig legislators have acted on 
the principle that the support of the poor is a mat- 
ter of charity. He and the democratic Tory party 
are of opinion that the poor have a right to support. 
8 169 



i^o Lord Beacons field. 

The land which once belonged to monasteries was 
practically, if not in name, the property of the poor ; 
after the great families had divided it among them- 
selves it had become the duty of those families to 
support the poor, and, before the new Poor Law, it 
was looked at in this light. The new law had occa- 
sioned a justifiable desperation among the poor, for 
poverty was now punished by compulsory labour, 
even on Sundays. 

.The speaker's argument is, as will be seen, directed 
against the Manchester conception of the State, yet 
it is not founded on pure socialism. The right of 
a man out of work to support is based not on an 
abstract right to work, but on his right to share in 
the former property of the Catholic Church. But 
while Disraeli took up the cause of the lowest classes 
in its social aspect, he left them politically entirely 
in the lurch. He Was' opposed at the election by 
one of the best and most honourable men of the 
Radical party, Colonel Thompson, a friend of Ben- 
tham ; he adhered to the demands which Disraeli 
formerly urged, namely, secret voting (to protect 
the political independence of the poor and depend- 
ent), and the right of the working man to the suf- 
frage — claims which could not be denied, and which 
have since been granted. Thompson was defeated, 
and Wyndham Lewis and Disraeli were elected. 
His ardent desire was at length attained — at- 



The Maiden Speech. 171 

tained after full five years' effort, after five futile 
attempts and four direct defeats ; the end was 
reached — he was a member of England's House of 
Commons. 

The object now was to maintain the position 
gained after so many fruitless assaults. 

William IV. had died in June, 1837. On the 
20th of November, the new Parliament elected on 
the accession of Queen Victoria met for a short 
session, the main purpose of which was to vote a 
civil list for the young sovereign. It will be seen, 
therefore, that Disraeli's Parliamentary career coin- 
cides exactly with the reign of the Queen whose 
personal confidence he has so largely succeeded in 
gaining; and who was to raise him to every post of 
honour and grant him every distinction that heart 
could wish. y 

Disraeli did not allow many weeks to pass before 
his voice was heard for the first time in Parliament. 
He had promised O'Connell that they should meet 
at Philippi, and O'Connell was then one of the most 
influential members of the House. The importance 
of the " maiden speech," as it is called in England, 
is well known. From the impression made by it the 
horoscope of the new member is cast : he may, by 
its means, become all at once a political magnate ; 
while, on the other hand, it has sometimes happened 
that speakers who have shone out of Parliament, 



172 Lord Beaconsfield, 

and of whom great expectations have been enter- 
tained, have met with so poor a succes d'estime, 
that they have not for a long time, if ever, recovered 
themselves. The moment, therefore, was a most 
critical one for Disraeli ; it was one of ^hose in 
which a man feels that he must succeed, that a de- 
feat this time would count for ten on any other 
occasion. 

It was on the evening of the 7th of December. 
The subject of discussion was the " Spottiswoode 
Subscription," so called. It was an appeal for sub- 
scriptions, issued by the Queen's printer, to support 
the Protestant, and oppose the Catholic, elections in 
Ireland. Several members of Parliament had sub- 
scribed, without considering that, as future judges 
of the validity of the elections, they would be at 
once partisans and judges. Whigs and Radicals 
combined in a vehement attack on the subscription, 
as a conspiracy against the religious and political 
liberties of Ireland. The Tories defended it no less 
vehemently as a weapon against the encroachments 
of Catholicism, and one of their speakers attacked 
O'Connell as the man who drove, " in conjunction 
with a set of priests, Irish voters to the poll, to vote 
for their god." * 

O'Connell replied in a vigorous and cutting 
speech. 

* O'Connor's " Life of Lord Beaconsfield," p. 165. 



The Maiden Speech, 173 

When he sat down, Disraeli rose. His costume 
was so unusual, that even this attracted all eyes : a 
green coat, a waistcoat covered with gold chains, a 
black tie without a collar. His personal appearance 
was equally un-English : a face pale as death, coal 
black eyes, and long black hair in curls. People 
had heard of him as a charlatan, and before he 
opened his lips they were disposed to ridicule and 
laughter. He began : ^ 

" I hope — I will even venture to believe — that the 
House will deign to extend to me that generous in- 
dulgence rarely refused to one who solicits their at- 
tention for the first time, and for which, I can say, 
without the slightest affectation, that I have al- 
ready had sufficient experience of the critical spirit 
which pervades this assembly, to feel that I stand 
much in need of it." 

The introduction, even, was not successful. Here, 
for the first time, there were mocking cries of 
"Hear! hear!" He continued : 

"The honourable and learned member for Dublin 
has taunted the honourable baronet the member 
for North Wilts, with having made a long, ram- 
bling, feeble, wandering, jumbling speech. I can as- 
sure the honourable and learned gentleman that I 
have paid the utmost attention to the remarks 
which have fallen from him, and I must say, with- 
out intending to make any reflections upon the 



1^4 Lord Beacons field. 

honourable baronet by any invidious comparison, it 
seems that the honourable and learned member has 
taken a hint of the style and manner from the 
honourable baronet, in the oration which he has 
just addressed to the House ; for it appears to me 
that there was scarcely a subject connected with 
Ireland that could possibly engage the attention of 
Parliament, that he has not introduced into his 
oratorical rhetoric." * 

Renewed and louder laughter followed. This 
dandified upstart, then, of ambiguous antecedents, 
wanted, in the very first words he stammered out, 
to pick a quarrel with the Irish national hero, who, 
with his Herculean frame, and his hat over one ear, 
was sitting opposite to his opponent, and, with the 
broadest laughter, was looking straight into his face. 
From this moment all the Irish brigade in the 
House, constituting O'Connell's not over well-be- 
haved body-guard, resolved to leave no method un- 
tried of putting the speaker out of countenance — 
hissing, whistling, laughing, crowing, loud talking, 
stamping, etc. Disraeli went on. He argued that 
the object of the subscription was not an attack 
on the Catholic Church, but a defence against the 
political agitation of that Church, protection for 
the Protestant electors and landowners of Ireland ; 

* " Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield : A Biography," vol. 
i. p. ii. 



The Maiden Speech. 175 

things had gone so far in Ireland that the tenants 
of a landowner had told him they could not give 
him their votes because their priests had forbidden 
it from the altar. In the speech itself there was 
nothing ridiculous; but his voice had an unusual 
ring, his action was more violent than happy, and 
his hearers were prejudiced against him. He could 
not conclude a single sentence without being inter- 
rupted by laughter. He paused in the midst of his 
speech, and said: "I shall not trouble the House at 
any length. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) I do not 
affect to be insensible to the difficulty of my posi- 
tion. (Renewed laughter.) I am sure I shall re- 
ceive the indulgence of honourable gentlemen — 
(continued laughter, and cries of " Question ! ") — 
but I can assure them? that if they do not wish to 
hear me, I, without a murmur, will sit down." 

He continued again for a quarter of an hour, 
the noise constantly increasing. When the tumult 
seemed the wildest, he said : " I wish I really could 
induce the House to give me five minutes more ; " 
and at the same moment was interrupted by such 
roars of laughter that he was obliged to pause for 
a few minutes ; but he took up the thread again, 
without losing his self-command. He had, unfortu- 
nately, made a mistake ; he had described himself 
as the representative of the younger members of 
the House ; and now said, after the peals of laugh- 



176 Lord Beaconsfield. 

ter which followed : " Then why laugh ? Why 
not let me enjoy this distinction, at least for one 
night ? " 

The laughter became so loud and so general that 
he was obliged to pause again. He continued. He 
pointed out that the Whigs, who had threatened to 
gain an overwhelming majority at the new election, 
had lost in numbers ; that the Tory party, which 
they had said was dead and buried so deep that 
there was no danger of its resurrection, had now 
raised its head as boldly as ever — when the inter- 
ruptions again overpowered him. 

" If honourable members think it is fair to inter- 
rupt me, I will submit. I would not act so towards 
any one, that is all I can say (laughter). Nothing 
is so easy as to laugh. " He. continued, and in a dif- 
ferent tone, with bold metaphors and cutting sar- 
casms, about a Whig Minister and a Whig member, 
whom he characterized respectively as, "The Tity- 
rus of the Treasury Bench, and the learned Daphne 
of Liskeard." He reproached the Minister with 
wishing to free Ireland in order to enslave England, 
that, standing " secure on the pedestal of power, 
he may wield in one hand the keys of St. Peter, 
and — -" * 

He could not get further ; so loud and incessant 

* O'Connor's "Life of Lord Beaconsfield," p. 166. 



The Maiden Speech. 177 

were the noise and laughter around him that it was 
impossible to finish the sentence. Every time he 
tried, there was a storm of bellowing, noise, and 
cries from, every bench and corner of the House, 
and some face glared at him. distorted with scornful 
laughter. At last he lost the self-possession which 
he had hitherto so remarkably retained, and, looking 
straight into the faces of some of his jeering oppo- 
nents, according to the testimony of an eye-witness, 
he lifted up his hands, and said, with an unusually 
loud and almost terrific voice : " I am not at all 
surprised, sir, at the reception I have met with. 
(Continued laughter.) I have begun several times, 
many things — (laughter) — and have often succeeded 
at last. (" Question ! ") Ay, sir, I will sit down 
now, but the time will come when you will hear 
me." 

He sat down, and the waves of ridicule closed 
over him. 

8* 



CHAPTER XIII. 

FIRST ATTEMPTS IN PARLIAMENT. 

V^E RIDENTIBUS ! Ay, woe to those who laugh ! 
They are destined to be forgotten and to be trod- 
den underfoot of those they laugh at. Woe to the 
laughers ! that is, to those to whom power, when of 
a novel sort, is always an object of ridicule, which 
they think to put down by the rudest of all methods, 
making grimaces at it. These are they whom the 
new power most easily disposes of ; for among them, 
among the prejudiced and little-minded, every pow- 
er, when it has risen, finds its most obsequious body- 
guard. Those who laugh are the same as those who 
cry, " Hurrah ! " — the crowd of followers, who be- 
gin by understanding nothing, and end by admiring 
everything, having no judgment of their own. 

Only a week after his fiasco, Disraeli spoke the 
second time on a subject connected with litera- 
ture, the rights of authors and publishers, concisely, 
clearly, and without interruption. A few months 
later, he spoke again, shortly, simply, and with the 
same result. By degrees, and by his persistent firm- 
ness, he gained a hearing. He spoke on questions 

i 7 3 



First Attempts in Parliament. 179 

of minor importance, always as accurately and con- 
cisely as possible, never laid himself open to attack, 
and threw down no challenges. This went on for a 
year. In 1839 ne began to change his tactics. He 
spoke on the most important measures, made long 
speeches, spoke often, and often provoked reply, but 
no one laughed. The House had grown accustomed 
to his appearance, and perceived that he was not to 
be put down by inarticulate brutality. 

Among his speeches there are two that seem to 
me to be noteworthy, as having a psychological in- 
terest, and they are on important questions — his 
speech on Lord John Russell's Education Bill, and 
the one on the so-called National Petition. 

The first measure was a small affair, and I only 
refer to it because Disraeli, by his opposition to it, 
for the first time took up a position in Parliament on 
one of the great fundamental questions of modern 
times — the relations between the Church, the State, 
and education. There were at that time in Ens- 
land two educational societies — the one in strict 
connection with the Church, the other of a more 
liberal character; the teachers employed by the 
latter might be of any religious profession, and the 
children were instructed in other creeds than that 
of the State Church. This society, was accustomed 
to receive, as an annual Government grant, the sum 
of £20,000, and Lord John Russell proposed to 



180 Lord Beaconsfield. 

grant it once for all. The Tory leaders raised a 
violent opposition, on religious grounds, to this in- 
nocent and natural proposition. Gladstone, who 
was then still a Tory, spoke strongly against it, and 
said that the State had no right to leave the one 
true religion in the lurch, and to allow true and 
false in education to stand on the same footing. 
The other Tory leaders were still more absurd and 
narrow-minded. Disraeli opposed the Bill ; as a 
good Tory he could hardly do otherwise. But it 
is noteworthy that at this stage of his political 
progress, he neglected to avail himself of the op- 
portunity of taking a side for or against religious lib- 
erty as a political principle. He spoke against the 
measure, on the not very serious ground that it was 
opposed to the English principle of self-government 
to establish a sort of State education. The reason 
was all the less appropriate because it came from an 
opponent on principle of the Manchester theory, but 
it was obviously only employed to cover indecision. 
Disraeli appears to have felt himself embarrassed at 
that time with some Radical reminiscences about 
the duty of the State to secure absolute liberty of 
conscience, and had not yet definitely formulated his 
doctrine of the State Church as the great guardian 
of the Semitic principle, which in this capacity must 
have the education of the people in her hands. 
Born a dissenter, and having been formerly an ad- 



First Attempts in Parliament. 181 

vocate of the rights of the dissenters, he could not 
possibly favour religious intolerance as a political 
doctrine ; nor could he sanction the principle that 
the State was of no creed, without joining the ranks 
of those who destroyed faith in the absolute supe- 
riority of his race by opposing the ideas and doc- 
trines which have emanated from it, and by which 
it still rules Europe. There was but one "way out 
of this dilemma, and he was not slow to take it. 
He continued to advocate the political equality of 
certain dissenters, but not in virtue of what he 
afterwards called the " ambiguous principle of reli- 
gious liberty," but in virtue of his own peculiar con- 
ception of Christianity. The Catholics were already 
emancipated, the Jews only were left, and in order 
to demand for them equal rights with other bodies 
it was not necessary to take refuge in the doctrine 
that the State was of no creed ; he argued from the 
fact that the Jews, as worshippers of the Semitic 
principle, the English representative of which was 
the Anglican Church, essentially belong to this 
Church. Christianity, according to his convictions, 
was only extended Judaism — Judaism for the mul- 
titude. One other class of dissenters was certainly 
excluded, those who dissented on scientific grounds. 
But he never interested himself much on their be- 
half ; the scientific free-thinkers were idealists, and 
must take the consequences. So far as he under- 



1 82 Lord Be aeons fie Id. 

stood them, they represented the Aryan principle, 
and therefore they were decidedly opposed to him. 
It was impossible to entrust education to them, or 
even to give them an equal share in it. The people 
must have a religion, and if they were deprived of 
the higher Asiatic religion which had been intro- 
duced, they would doubtless return all over Europe 
to their ancient heathen worship. Summa sum- 
marum, the Church should keep education in her 
hands, and the professors of various creeds should 
have equal political rights, on a principle which 
excluded religious liberty. 

The second matter of importance on which Dis- 
raeli made himself heard in the early part of his 
Parliamentary career, was the National Petition of 
the Chartists. It is usual to speak of the Chartists 
as the earliest English Socialists, and the expression 
is partly correct, in so far as the Chartist rising was 
based upon a movement of a purely social charac- 
ter ; but what makes the term less appropriate is 
that, first, the Chartists desired only purely political 
reforms, and secondly, their demands were not in 
any degree founded on abstract rational ideas, such 
as the rights of man, and the like, but in true Eng- 
lish style they demanded changes in the franchise, 
and in the organization of the legislative body, as 
ancient constitutional rights, or rather, they de- 
manded the restoration of these rights. 



First Attempts in Parliament. 183 

Since the great impetus given to manufactures 
by machinery had altogether altered the relations 
of the workman to his craft, to his master and his 
customers, the working classes in England felt a 
profound dissatisfaction with the state of depen- 
dence in which they found themselves in relation to 
capital ; and out of this arose an impulse to associa- 
tion in great unions, which were to uphold their 
common interests. The sufferings of the work-peo- 
ple were all the more severe because there had not 
yet been any change in the rule of laisser-aller in 
legislation. No Act of Parliament had then fixed a 
maximum of the hours of labour in factories ; the 
labour of women and children was drawn into the 
vortex of open competition, without any limitation 
imposed in the interests of humanity; and wages 
were, besides this, curtailed by the truck system, the 
price of goods being arbitrarily fixed by the middle- 
man. About the same time, the agitation for the 
Reform Bill, which promised to confer new rights 
on the classes hitherto excluded from political life, 
set the minds of the working classes in a ferment ; 
but the actual Reform Bill, like the bourgeois mon- 
archy in France, greatly disappointed the fourth es- 
tate, and, as was natural, the social discontent took 
the form of a political movement, whose first ob- 
ject was a share in the political privileges of the 
favoured classes. The new Poor Law soon proved 



184 Lord Beacons field. 

to be the only fruit of the Whig victory for the 
lower classes, and this fruit was a bitter one. The 
previous method of caring for the poor was on a 
patriarchal, unsystematic plan ; their education was 
indeed but poorly provided for, but help was not 
sparingly given to those in want, and unfortunately 
often to the idle and to beggars. The new order of 
things was economical and systematic, but cold and 
hard. It would have been just if extreme poverty 
were always the well-deserved punishment of idle- 
ness, and this almost appeared to have been the 
idea of the legislators, for the justifiable and well- 
meaning war waged against poverty was almost, 
under the new law, a war against the poor them- 
selves. Relief was given by taking them into work- 
houses, where husbands and wives, children and 
parents, were separated from each other. Even old 
married couples were separated, and only saw each 
other on Sundays from opposite sides of the chapel, 
and every attempt at communication was punished 
as a breach of discipline. Daily labour was hard 
and unmitigated, space and diet were all carefully 
measured out, and imprisonment was frequent, al- 
though the workhouse itself was very like a prison. 
Under these circumstances, it was not to be won- 
dered at that disturbances often took place among 
the working classes about the country — the agricul- 
tural labourers revenged themselves more and more 



First Attempts in Parliament. 185 

frequently by setting fire to their masters' stacks, 
and almost every day in the year 1839 there were 
reports of the destruction of agricultural and other 
machines. The agitation resulted in the drawing 
up of a Radical project of legislation (the People's 
Charter), in which universal suffrage, vote by ballot, 
new electoral districts, annual Parliaments, payment 
of members, so that men of the working class might 
also have seats in the councils of the nation, were 
demanded — all things which would certainly only 
have indirectly remedied the oppression under 
which the masses were suffering, but which, never- 
theless, appeared to them the best means of allevi- 
ating their distress. 

The leaders drew up a petition to Parliament, 
and collected in a short time no less than 1,200,000 
signatures. The original proposition of the chief 
leader of the movement, Feargus O'Connor, was 
that the petition should be handed in "by a depu- 
tation of 500,000 men proceeding in peaceful and 
orderly procession, each with a musket over his 
arm." * Instead of this, however, the petition was 
taken to Westminster on the 14th of June, 1839, m 
a less tumultuous, if in a less impressive, manner, on 
a triumphal car, accompanied by the representa- 
tives of the Trades Unions in solemn procession. It 

* Hitchman's " Public Life of the Earl of Beaconsfield," p. 156. 



1 86 Lord Beacons field, 

was found necessary to construct a special machine 
to convey the enormous mass of parchment into the 
House. It was taken in, and remained lying on the 
floor of the House, the silent representative of the 
voice of 1,200,000 men, during the debate on the 
cause of the working people. The people had no 
hope of seeing all their demands immediately 
granted ; but what they did hope, and what the 
Radical leaders, who found it every day more diffi- 
cult to withhold the people from violence, had held 
out a prospect of, was at all events a thorough and 
searching discussion of the wishes of the working 
men — a recognition of the existence of this great 
class interest, a recognition of the social question, 
as it was soon afterwards called, as a problem the 
solution of which must inevitably be sought. What 
actually took place had not been thought possible 
by any of the delegates or leaders of the party. 
The National Petition made not the slightest im- 
pression. It was laid before an empty House. But 
a very few of the haughty members of Parliament 
had thought it worth while to go to Westminster 
to reject the petition. It excited less interest than 
the most insignificant party debate ; it was thrown 
into the shade by the passionate interest excited in 
those days by a discussion about the Constitution 
of Jamaica. There was not a single member of the 
Lower House absent from this debate, and the 



First Attempts in Parliament, 187 

strangers' gallery was crowded to the ceiling. 
While the discussion of the interests of a few 
wealthy, half-foreign planters in a distant colony 
occupied universal attention for weeks, the de- 
mands of the great Anglo-Saxon nation, their peti- 
tion signed by hundreds of thousands, and, so to 
speak, with the blood of the people, occupied but a 
few hours, and, after a debate without any depth or 
seriousness, it was rejected. While the tropical 
labour question, the subject of the emancipation of 
the slaves in Jamaica, was warmly discussed, the 
domestic labour question, the grievances of the 
white slaves, who were but little better off, excited 
no interest. 

One member only spoke with the sympathy and 
earnestness appropriate to the occasion, and this 
was Disraeli. He attributed the agitating attitude 
of the party of the working men to the agitation of 
the Whigs when they were working their propa- 
ganda for the Reform Bill. The Chartists had only 
learnt a lesson from the Whigs, and it was therefore 
most unjust of the Liberals so vehemently to con- 
demn the conduct of the Radicals. Had not a 
Whig orator in his day, who was afterwards a mem- 
ber of the Cabinet (Lord Brougham), advised that 
100,000 men should go from Birmingham to London 
to demand Reform ? He traced the general discon- 
tent to the Reform Bill itself ; he again took occa- 



1 88 Lord Beaconsfield. 

sion to show that the Constitution of the country- 
had formerly been based on a more aristocratic 
principle; to a few privileged persons it granted 
large rights, and therefore laid upon them large ob- 
ligations ; in undertaking the government of the 
masses, they also undertook to care for their wel- 
fare. By the Reform Bill, power has been conferred 
on a new grade of society, and this class, from its 
character and traditions, felt no obligation to exer- 
cise social duties. What the Chartists complained 
of, without exactly knowing it, was the government 
of the middle class — that middle class by which 
the Government was chiefly supported, and among 
whom the opposition to the agricultural interests 
had its chief camp. The Chartists were not inimical 
to the aristocracy and the Corn Laws. He was not 
ashamed to say, however much he disapproved of 
the Charter, that he sympathized with the Chartists. 
At that period it required considerable personal 
and Parliamentary courage to make such a speech 
as this, although a sort of aristocratic turn was given 
to it. Disraeli knew how it would be taken and 
turned to account — it was something like it would be 
to avow that you sympathized with the Internation- 
alists nowadays — but with these words he clearly 
referred the proletariat to the Tories. Attempts 
have been made to show that Disraeli was not sin- 
cere in the certainly very Platonic sympathy he ex- 



First Attempts in Parliament. 189 

pressed with the Chartists, from the circumstance 
that, during the same year, he voted against the bal- 
lot and the shortening of Parliaments ; this implies 
that, personally, he did not see a way out of their 
social difficulties for the working classes by the at- 
tainment of political rights, while he professed the 
contrary opinion ; and it was for this reason that he 
spoke of sympathy with the Chartists, though he 
disapproved of the Charter. He explained clearly 
enough in " Sybil," six years afterwards, how he 
meant his words to be understood. The sum and 
substance of his opinions was this : The common 
people are right in calling themselves oppressed and 
overreached, but they are wrong in the assumption 
that Toryism is their enemy and approves their 
present distress ; in order to obtain relief, they must 
learn that they will get nothing from the present 
leaders, and that no one but the heads of the aris- 
tocracy can or will help them. The correctness of 
this conviction of Disraeli's may well be doubted, 
but not that it really was his conviction. 

Immediately after the rejection of the National 
Petition, violent popular outbreaks took place in 
Birmingham and other places. Disraeli voted 
against the consent demanded of, and granted by, 
Government, to suppress them by force of arms. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

" YOUNG ENGLAND " AND " CONINGSBY." 

A FEW months after Disraeli took part in the 
Chartist debate, he entered the married state. In 
his thirty-fifth year he married the widow of his col- 
league, Wyndham Lewis, member for Maidstone. 
Mrs. Lewis was more than ten years his senior, and 
had a large fortune. This apparently singular union 
was well known to be an unusually happy one. 
They appear to have adored each other. Disraeli's 
wife took an enthusiastic interest in all her hus- 
band's efforts, intellectual and political. Her de- 
votion and strength of mind have been illustrated 
by a well-known anecdote. One day, when setting 
off to drive to the House of Commons, two of her 
fingers were crushed by the door of the carriage, 
but in spite of intense pain, she concealed it from 
her husband as he sat by her side, in order that he 
might not be disturbed in an important speech 
which he had to make. She kept up, so it is said, 
till the moment when he alighted, and then fell 
fainting on the cushions. She seems not to have 

been a woman who had had much courtly training, 

190 



"Young England" and "Coningsby" 191 

but was very enthusiastic, and had great goodness 
of heart. When, in the year 1868, Disraeli declined 
a peerage for himself, he prayed the Queen to make 
his wife Countess of Beaconsfield, and she bore the 
title until her death in 1873. The present Lord 
Beaconsfield accepted the rank and title three years 
afterwards. 

The first steps towards Disraeli's Parliamentary 
career were taken ; his social position was secured 
by his marriage ; he now looked around him for 
some who shared his views, for a party in a more 
restricted sense, namely, for a group of aristocrats 
within the great Tory party who were disposed to 
accept Toryism according to his definition of it. A 
distinguished man seldom finds those who share 
his opinions among men of his own age. As the 
views he proclaims are for the future, he necessarily 
finds quite different opinions prevailing among his 
contemporaries ; even at the best, it takes a long 
time to convert men who have once formed their 
opinions, and it is seldom of much use to try, as the 
mature man is shy of a party in process of forma- 
tion. He who wants to make a fresh start must 
train his followers himself ; while, therefore, in his 
youth, he generally prefers the society of those 
older than himself, he must now seek those who 
are much younger. They are more ready to receive 
impressions, take an idea more quickly, and are 



192 Lord Beaconsfteld. 

sometimes ready to make personal sacrifices for the 
views they have adopted. 

Now, just at that time there was a little band of 
young aristocrats fresh from the universities, who 
were born enthusiasts, romantic dreamers, who 
dreamed of reviving the spirit of the old noblesse 
of England and France, and were deeply impressed 
with the sentiment that noblesse oblige. These 
young men abhorred the superficial and brutal 
methods by which the Reformation, in its day, had 
been carried out. It ought to have been a mental 
and moral regeneration. All that it had achieved 
was to despoil the Church of the treasures which 
had been entrusted to her, and which, in her best 
days, she had expended in the education of the 
people and given to the poor, and to give the booty 
to the Whigs ! And they were told by Disraeli's 
speeches and pamphlets that the sole object of the 
Whigs had always been to set up an aristocratic 
republic in England on the Venetian model, in 
which the Whigs could turn to their own advantage 
the power of the Crown and the property of the 
people. These young nobles had that hankering 
for Roman Catholicism which in every country of 
Europe has been a result of romanticism. The pres- 
ent, with its absence of" ceremonial, was hateful to 
them, and they longed for the forms and cere- 
monies and artistic pomp of the earlier Church. 



"Young England" and "Coniiigsby." 193 

They mourned over the coldness and indifference 
which had arisen between the noble landowner and 
his tenants ; over the disappearance of national cos- 
tume and the old, simple, rural manners. They 
were incensed when they saw the old Gothic abbeys 
in ruins, from which stone after stone had been 
dragged away to build barrack-like factories. They 
looked back mournfully to the time when, instead 
of the wretched race of labourers they saw around 
them, there was still a yeomanry, a class of free 
cultivators of the soil, as old as the nobility, and 
holding a position of equal legal security. Being 
born at old castles, as heirs of large estates and 
property, they resolved, as far as in them lay, to 
change all this, and' to give the Church and people 
their due ; their cause was one and the same : there 
was a time when the priests of God were the born 
tribunes of the people, and when the nobleman 
was born to be the protector and father of his peas- 
antry. 

This little group of young men, about twenty- 
two years of age, who, shortly after 1840, acknowl- 
edged Disraeli as their leader, adopted the name 
of " Young England " — a name, of course, which 
has nothing in common with similar names in the 
present day. This little aristocratic clique does 
not recall Mazzini's " Young Europe," nor " Young 
Poland," nor " Young Germany," nor yet the group 
9 



1 94 Lord Beaconsfield. 

of disciples of Victor Hugo, consisting of artists and 
poets, " Les Jeunes France /" for it was neither revo- 
lutionary in politics, like the former associations^ 
nor eager for artistic changes, like the latter ; it was 
simply reactionary, with all the enthusiasm of youth. 
Yet even this "Young England," with its not very 
numerous members, had, so to speak, its Right and 
Left. The Right was represented by Lord John 
Manners, of Belvoir Castle, son of the Duke of Rut- 
land, who gave poetic form to the doctrines of the 
new school, in an extremely juvenile, not to say 
childish, collection of poems, called " England's 
Trust." Lord John Manners raves about the time 
when the power of the Church was equal to her im- 
portance, when haughty monarchs were compelled 
to crave pardon from some poor man of God, and 
when the people saw in the king who bore the 
sceptre the anointed of the Lord. He hopes that a 
time will come when Catholics and Protestants will 
reunite to form one Church ; he glorifies Charles I. 
as a royal martyr ; considers that the nobility alone 
can save the country, and that England's trade is her 
curse and misfortune ; and with a turn so harsh that 
it is still sometimes quoted satirically, he exclaims : — 



In many a hamlet, yet uncursed by trade, 
Bloom Faith and Love all lightly in the shade : 
Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die, 
But leave us still our old nobility ! " 



"Young England" and "Coningsby." 195 

The Left of the group was represented by George 
Sydney Smythe, a highly gifted young man, son of 
the diplomatist, Lord Strangford. He also dreamed 
of a powerful aristocracy, and a Church which 
should shower down alms on the poor ; he also 
looked upon the Stuarts as noble martyrs, and was 
both amazed and incensed that, with the example 
of the Stuarts before their eyes, the great ones of 
the earth did not see their natural allies in the 
masses, and their natural enemies in the rapacious 
minority. But his tendencies were far more liberal 
than those of his friend above mentioned ; he was 
continually in a state of development, had no ambi- 
tion to prevent him from acknowledging a change in 
his views, and soon gave up his enthusiasm for au- 
thority as such, in favour of the principle of per- 
sonal and independent research. He was a zealous 
Free Trader, and afterwards parted company with 
Manners and Disraeli. He possessed considerable 
literary talent, and has left writings of value, both 
poetical and journalistic. 

Such were the noble and high-minded young men 
who met Disraeli half-way, and formed the centre 
of the little group who united with him. For the 
mockers, the whole party, who never had any in- 
fluence on the history of England, was but " a 
clique of young gentlemen in white waistcoats, who 
wrote bad verses." The definition, however, was 



196 Lord Beaconsfield. 

not appropriate, for the little band comprised mis- 
sionaries and martyrs to be (Whytehead), and poets, 
including Tennyson. " Young England " had vast 
enthusiasm for " Old England," but to the two old 
political parties it was in the highest degree obnox- 
ious. It wanted to change the whole policy of the 
country, and cherished the juvenile belief that Eng- 
land was to be saved by its youth — " saved " was 
the term, no lesser word would suffice. 

It will be seen that it was precisely such followers 
as these that Disraeli wanted. He either over- 
looked their romantic absurdities or made allowance 
for them ; romance in itself struck an answering 
chord in his own mind, and their enthusiasm for the 
Church and the people, their conception of the obli- 
gations of the nobility, he could turn to account. 
He was attracted to these high-minded young men, 
and felt himself young with them, for the span of 
years that he was in advance of them had not in 
the least diminished his vigour. He had always felt 
that he had a far larger fund of youthful strength 
than the average of men. It was part of his pride 
in his race and family. He mentions with satisfac- 
tion, somewhere in his writings, that his grand- 
father attained the age of ninety, and though 
obliged to confess that his father only lived to 
be eighty-two, he softens down the fact by stating 
that this comparatively early death was not caused 



"Young England" and "Com'ngsby." 197 

by decay, but was due to an attack of a virulent 
epidemic, which desolated the neighbourhood, and 
snapped the thread of the old man's life. I remem- 
ber also that Disraeli said (during the controversy 
with the Globe about his political consistency), when 
thirty-one years of age : " My letter to Lord Lynd- 
hurst, just published, to which you allude, contains 
the opinions with which I entered political life four 
years ago ; opinions which I adopted when the 
party I opposed appeared likely to enjoy power for 
half a century ; opinions which, I hope, half a cen- 
tury hence, I may still profess."* 

No one says such things unless he looks forward 
to prolonged youth and long life. According to his 
ideas, therefore, he was not guilty of any anachro- 
nism in placing himself at the head of " Young 
England " when nearly forty years of age. 

The ascendancy which the clever parvenu gained 
over the scions of ancient noble families was by no 
means agreeable to their parents and friends. A 
letter from Lord John Manners's father to the father 
of George Smythe, in De Fonblanque's " Memoirs 
of the Strangford Family," bears eloquent testi- 
mony to this. The Duke of Rutland wrote to Lord 
Strangford as follows : — 

" I lament as much as you can do the influence 

* " Benjamin Disraeli : A Literary and Political Biography," p. 631. 



198 Lord Beaconsfield. 

which Mr. Disraeli has acquired over several young 
British senators, and over your son and mine espe- 
cially. I do not know Mr. Disraeli by sight, but I 
have respect only for his talents, which I think he 
sadly misuses. It is grievous that two young men 
such as John and Mr. Smythe should be led by one 
of whose integrity of purpose I have an opinion 
similar to your own, though I can judge only by his 
public career. The admirable character of our sons 
only makes them the more assailable by the arts of 
a designing person."* 

It will be readily understood that the sons saw 
with very different eyes from their fathers, when it 
is considered how these young men, just fresh from 
college, must have been impressed with Disraeli's 
superiority. He had been eagerly prosecuting his- 
torical-political studies for years ; he had long been 
a practical politician ; he had poetic faculty enough 
to follow the highest flights of romance, or, more 
correctly speaking, to lead them ; and he had a 
ready-made political system to offer them which 
suited their dreams, as far as dreams and system 
could anyhow agree. They admired his coolness, 
his acquired repose, his art of characterizing a man 
or a cause by some telling phrase, and they listened 
with devout attention to his mystic talk about the 

* O'Connor's " Life of Lord Beaconsfield," p. 222. 



"Young England" and "Coningsby." 199 

great advantages possessed by the race to which he 
belonged — the only race to which God had ever 
spoken or had ever made the mediator between 
Himself and the world. They heard with astonish- 
ment that his pedigree was as good and as old as 
theirs. These Young Englanders had the beauty, 
the finished education, the teachableness and en- 
thusiasm of the ancient Hellenic youth, and Disraeli 
sat in their midst at Belvoir Castle, or strolled with 
them in the park at Deepdene, and expounded to 
them the significance of race, the origin of religions, 
the long-distorted truths of history, and the only 
principles which could guide politics aright, in the 
animated and pregnant discourse of which he was 
master. 

It was in these conversations that the work of 
Disraeli's which had the greatest success originated, 
and it marked an epoch in his life, for it was from 
its publication that the estimation of his impor- 
tance, both political and literary, by the larger pub- 
lic, may be dated. This was " Coningsby, or The 
New Generation." 

The purpose of the novel, which appeared in May, 
1844, with a dedication to a member of " Young 
England," Henry Hope, of Deepdene, was to assert 
the right of a select Tory party to be both a popu- 
lar and a national party, as well as to serve as a pro- 
gramme to the clique, who here boldly appeared 



200 Lord B eaconsfield. 

under the name of the " New Generation." Dis- 
raeli's experience with his "Vindication of the 
English Constitution " had convinced him of the im- 
possibility of making abstract political essays a pro- 
paganda for his ideas among general readers ; he re- 
solved, therefore, to harness his talents as a novelist 
to these ideas, in order to open a wider sphere for 
them. The result was a novel without any artistic 
form, whose pages were permeated by political dis- 
cussions. Still, it was a work which, in spite of its 
medley of politico-historic reflections and fictitious 
incidents, was interesting without producing excite- 
ment, and deserved success from the excellent draw- 
ing of the chief characters, no less than from its spir- 
ited paradoxes. Three large editions were called 
for in three months ; 50,000 copies were sold in 
America. Five "Keys," a parody in three vol- 
umes, and a large number of critical articles, still 
further attested the author's great success. 

The book at once arrested the reader by its im- 
partiality ; Tories and Whigs were assailed by the 
same merciless satire. Punch had a picture of the 
author as the infant Hercules, who had strangled 
two venomous serpents in his hands, the one having 
the word " Tory," the other " Whig," on its belly. 
The audacity which the sketch caricatured could 
not fail to excite curiosity. The treatment which 
the Whigs received in the novel does not need any 



"Young England'"' and "Coningsby" 201 

long description. On the third page we meet with 
the expressions about the " Venetian " party, with 
which we are so well acquainted ; about the attempts 
of a rapacious nobility to degrade the sovereign of 
the people to the position of a doge ruled by mag- 
nates ; and about the infringement of the ancient 
Constitution of England since 1832, for the Lower 
House has been treated officially as the House of 
the people, instead of as the representative of a third 
estate, with certain privileges, which is in principle 
identical with universal suffrage, etc. But the Tory 
party comes no better off. The author goes back 
to the Liverpool administration, and accuses it of 
either acting on no principle at all, or on principles 
diametrically opposed to those on which the great 
,Tory leaders of former times acted. He asserts 
that . the members of it were utterly destitute of 
the "divine" faculties which a statesman ought 
to possess ; they were neither orators, thinkers, nor 
observers ; they knew no more of the actual circum- 
stances of the country than a savage does of an ap- 
proaching eclipse. Ignorant of " every principle of 
every branch of political science," they extolled 
themselves as practical men, but in their language a 
practical man was one " who practised the follies of 
his predecessors." On Lord Castlereagh, Lord Sid- 
mouth, and the " arch mediocrity " Lord Liverpool, 
a condemnation is pronounced, not less contemptu- 
9* 



202 Lord Beaconsfield. 

ous than that of the great poets who passed judg- 
ment on them and for ever branded them with con- 
tempt. 

The turn then comes of the contemporaneous 
Tory nobility of the old school. They are repre- 
sented in "Coningsby" by Lord Monmouth, grand- 
father of the hero, who, tyrannical and epicurean 
as a little German sovereign of the olden time, lives 
exclusively for pleasure, surrounded by a court of 
admiring millionaires and paid parasites. Lord 
Monmouth is a cautious, hard man, who hates feel- 
ings and detests a scene ; he does not like to hear 
of any one being ill or dead ; he wants to be amused 
at all hazards, and, above all, to do just what he 
pleases, in a quiet way, without objection or remon- 
strance. His one political aim is to obtain a ducal 
coronet. He has in his service a factotum of the 
name of Rigby, a politician, journalist, and member 
of Parliament, who obsequiously executes all his 
lordship's behests, even so far as to inform an Ital- 
ian princess, who has been his mistress for years 
and lives in his house, that he intends to dismiss her 
in order to marry her step-daughter. Neverthe- 
less, with all his severity and wickedness, Lord 
Monmouth possesses a certain dignity conferred by 
consciousness of power, and always maintains a 
faultless bearing in the Louis Quatorze style. 

But the novelist's impartiality does not end here. 



"Young England" and "Coningsby." 203 

With a surprising sense of justice, he confronts Lord 
Monmouth with a representative of the aspiring 
middle class, Millbank, a manufacturer, who resem- 
bles the lord only in his resolute will, but in every 
other respect is his antipodes, upright and down- 
right, industrious and benevolent, and possessed by 
a glowing hatred of the ruling class of drones. On 
personal grounds also he is the bitter enemy of 
Lord Monmouth. 

The lord has sent his orphan grandson, and the 
manufacturer his son, to Eton, the training-ground 
of the " New Generation." Here we watch them as 
they are growing up about the time of the Reform 
Bill, at their lessons, their discussions, and their 
sports ; we see Young England in the bud. They 
are all but one sons of noble families — Coningsby, 
perhaps, intended for the young George Smythe ; 
Henry Sydney for Lord John Manners ; and several 
others. Oswald Millbank, the son of the manufac- 
turer, is the only son of a commoner in the school ; 
he has long felt an enthusiastic admiration for the 
circle of young nobles, and from the day when Con- 
ingsby saves him from drowning, at the risk of his 
own life, he is his sworn friend. By degrees, as the 
lads grow older, they begin to be politicians, and 
their natural instincts lead them to some great po- 
litical truths, which, in the year 1835, " were at the 
bottom of every (Eton) boy's heart, but nowhere 



204 Lord Beaconsfield. 

else " — if not in a brochure on the British Constitu- 
tion, which the author's modesty forbids him to 
name. Coningsby's talents make him the born 
leader of these boys. When he leaves school we 
are told, in the description of him, that he is " not a 
stranger to the stirring impulses of high ambition," 
but the world has hitherto been a world of books to 
him. He is attached to his young friends, but as he 
has himself formed their opinions and guided their 
thoughts, they cannot be to him what he has been 
to them ; he longs to meet with a mind equal or 
superior to his own. 

While he is in this frame of mind, he seeks shelter 
one day from the storm in the public room of an 
inn, and some one comes galloping on his Arab 
steed through the wind and rain to the same place. 
It was a stranger, perhaps ten years older than Con- 
ingsby, pale, with thoughtful brow and dark eyes 
beaming with rare intelligence — Sidonia the Jew, 
with the wealth of a Rothschild, and the reputation 
of a Montefiore among his brethren in the faith in 
East and West, a Disraeli in wit, pride of race, cool- 
headedness, and political insight. He differs only 
from the author of the novel in that, being still of 
the Jewish faith, he is excluded from taking part in 
the public life of England, and is a striking instance 
of the forces which she fails to avail herself of 
through her foolish intolerance. Coningsby and 



"Young England" and u Coningsby T 205 

Sidonia fall into conversation ; the young noble ex- 
presses his desire to travel, to visit the classic sites, 
especially Athens. " The age of ruins is past," says 
Sidonia, and he directs attention from Athens to 
Manchester. Sidonia is not one of those who think 
that young men of genius require experience in 
order to perform great things. He allows that, as 
a general rule, " youth is a blunder, manhood a 
struggle, old age a regret ; " but there is another 
law for genius. He mentions many great men who 
have attained world-wide fame, although they died 
between thirty and forty, and concludes with charg- 
ing Coningsby to nurture his mind with great 
thoughts, for " to believe in the heroic makes 
heroes." 

In these phrases the author's conviction may be 
traced, that highly gifted youth has both the right 
and the power to effect a thorough reform in the 
public spirit of a nation, and this was obviously the 
conviction which kept the little band together. 

After the meeting with Sidonia, Coningsby feels 
as we do when we have closed a book from which 
our minds have received a powerful impulse. He 
goes to Manchester, makes acquaintance with the 
condition of the working classes, and sees for the 
first time, not without interest, Oswald Millbank's 
beautiful sister. From the elder Millbank he hears 
opinions about the aristocracy which astonish and 



206 Lord Beaconsfield. 

instruct him. He appeals to their ancient line- 
age. 

" Ancient lineage ! " said Mr. Millbank. " I never 
heard of a peer with an ancient lineage. The real 
old families of this country are to be found among 
the peasantry. ... I know of some Norman gen- 
tlemen whose fathers undoubtedly came over with 
the Conqueror. But a peer with an ancient lineage 
is to me quite a novelty, . . . the Wars of the 
Roses freed us from those gentlemen. I take it 
after the battle of Tewkesbury a Norman baron 
was almost as rare a being in England as a wolf is 
now." 

u I have always understood," said Coningsby, 
" that our peerage was the finest in Europe." 

" From themselves," said Millbank, "and the 
heralds they pay to paint their carriages. But I go 
to facts. When Henry VII. called his first Parlia- 
ment, there were only twenty-nine temporal peers, 
. . . and of these not five remain. . . . We owe 
the English peerage to three sources: the spoliation 
of the Church ; the open and flagrant sale of its 
honours by the elder Stuarts ; and the borough- 
mongering of our own times."* 

The family enmity between the houses of Mon- 
mouth and Millbank is a bar to Coningsby's union 



* << 



Coningsby," p. 169. 



"Young England" and "Coningsby" 207 

with Miss Millbank. In Paris, where he receives 
new impressions, he sees her again, but gives up the 
hope of winning her,, believing that she loves Sido- 
nia. When again in England, he discovers his mis- 
take. But now a fresh obstacle arises : he positively 
refuses to act in political matters according to his 
grandfather's wishes, and openly avows that he 
means to act on principle, and on heroic principles 
too — for this his lordship has no comprehension — 
and thus Coningsby forfeits forever the favour of 
the man on whom his future depends. When Lord 
Monmouth dies, and his will is opened, it is found 
that he has left his enormous fortune to a poor 
young girl, his illegitimate child by a French ac- 
tress, and has only left Coningsby ;£ 10,000 — a sum 
which, in the case of Disraeli's heroes, means pov- 
erty and utter destitution. Sidonia comforts Con- 
ingsby in his distress by representing to him that, 
with youth, health, and his knowledge and abilities, 
and his love of pleasure long ago satisfied, he had 
no reason whatever to give up hope of a successful 
future. Just like Count Alcibiades de Mirabel in 
" Henrietta Temple," he expounds the true view of 
life, that happiness does not consist in certain pos- 
sessions, but in the conscious enjoyment of one's 
own personality, and that so long as existence itself 
is a source of pleasure, nothing is lost. Coningsby 
rouses himself, sets to work, makes a name, wins 



208 Lord Beacons field. 

Miss Millbank, and moreover — this is inevitable 
with Disraeli — is the heir of the young French girl, 
who dies of consumption, and leaves him all her 
property, for in all humility she has always loved him. 

In spite of its nine books, there is no action in 
the novel. The gist of it all is that Sidonia edu- 
cates Coningsby, and Coningsby the rising genera- 
tion. By the end of the book, he is ready to grap- 
ple with the older generation, and to enter upon 
a contest, for which his victory over the political 
intriguer, Rigby, at an election is the first good 
omen. The novelist closes his work with the follow- 
ing query: — "They (Coningsby and his friends) 
stand now on the threshold of public life. What 
will be their fate? Will they maintain the great 
truths which in study and solitude they have em- 
braced? Or will their courage exhaust itself in the 
struggle — their enthusiasm evaporate before hollow- 
hearted ridicule? Or will they remain brave, single, 
and true, . . . and restore the happiness .of their 
country by believing in their own energies and dar- 
ing to be great?" * Of course, the novel is intend- 
ed to compel the reader to answer the question in 
the affirmative. 

The plot of the book is so unimportant because 
nothing turns upon it, but as a compensation there 

* "Coningsby," p. 477. 



"Young England" and "Coningsby." 209 

is a whole gallery of portraits. Some of them are 
mere sketches, for in this instance, as in general, 
Disraeli has a real person in his mind, and hopes 
that the public will recognize him, and be able to 
fill up the outline ; but the most important charac- 
ters are drawn with great power and consistency. 
A vivid idea may be gained, from the perusal of 
this book, of the lives and opinions of the English 
nobles between 1830 and 1840. Disraeli is generally 
considered to flatter the aristocracy, and there is 
this much of truth in it — he has now and then 
abused his talents as an author by flattering some 
individual whose favour he desired to gain ; but 
apart from this, it may be said that &ew authors * 
have made the political and social immorality of 
the nobility the subject of keener satire. Old Lord 
Monmouth is drawn with a distinctness that makes 
him a permanent type; it is all carried out to his 
last breath, and with perfect coolness, not with the 
moral indignation which Dickens and Thackeray 
scarcely know how to restrain, superior as they may 
be as novelists to Disraeli. 

Sidonia is the chief character in the book, and 
Disraeli's liking for him has made him into a genu- 
ine hero of romance. He knows everybody and 
everything, can do everything, goes through "the 
world invulnerable as a god, does not reciprocate 
the sentiments he awakens, is indifferent to praise or 



210 Lord Beaconsjield. 

blame, and wrapped up in his pride of race like a 
Spanish grandee in his mantle. The part he plays 
is to humble and instruct the nobility around him. 
Sidonia's family comes from Aragon ; among his 
ancestors, who were all secretly Jews, there was an 
Archbishop of Toledo and a Grand Inquisitor. He 
has an unparalleled genius for business, and is the 
head of a gigantic banking concern, makes millions 
upon millions by his profound insight into political 
combinations, and establishes branches of his house 
in every city of importance in Europe. Not that he 
has any passion for business or money — he is too 
cool-headed for that, but as he is shut out by his 
religion from the only career which appears to him 
worth following, he occupies himself with mercan- 
tile transactions, study, and meditation. In the 
description of him it is said : " He could please ; he 
could do more — he could astonish. He could throw 
out a careless observation, which would make the 
oldest diplomatist start ; a winged word that gained 
him the consideration, sometimes the confidence, of 
sovereigns. When he had fathomed the intelligence 
which governs Europe, and which can only be done 
by personal acquaintance, he returned to this coun- 
try."* As will be perceived, Disraeli's ideal is 
grafted on a Rothschild. 

* " Coningsby," p. 220. 



"Young England''' and "Coningsby" 211 

Sidonia does not trouble himself much about po- 
litical forms. He regards the political constitution 
as a machine, the motive power of which is the 
national character. So long as the health and 
strength of the national character is maintained, 
the State may be strong, even with imperfect politi- 
cal institutions ; but if it fall into decay, no political 
institutions can arrest its downfall. But national- 
ity is to him only an intermediate idea; national- 
ity is based upon race, for without the impress of 
race, nationality is inconceivable and meaningless. 
His faith in race concurs with his conviction of the 
overwhelming influence of individual character ; for 
it is only as a personification of the race that the 
individual appears to him to be great. 

This indifference to political forms prepares the 
way in Sidonia's mind for the transition to religious 
and political absolutism. " Man is made to adore 
and to obey" is one of his favourite axioms, and it 
necessarily implies that there must be personages 
made to be adored and obeyed. - 

Sidonia is of opinion that a Parliament does not 
offer greater guarantees against injustice and arbi- 
trary acts than an absolute king, and that " public 
opinion " — this abstraction worshipped as a divinity 
in modern times, which Lothar Bucher once aptly 
compared with the Nemesis of the ancients — would 
exercise the same control over the sovereign as over 



212 Lord Beacons field. 

Parliament. His sympathy with enlightened abso- 
lutism is summed up in the following words : — " In 
an enlightened age, the monarch on the throne, free 
from the vulgar prejudices and the corrupt interests 
of the subject, becomes again divine ! " * 

These theories take exceedingly with his young 
disciples, and we find them repeating them almost 
word for word. Coningsby laments over an evil 
age, which has turned " anointed kings into chief 
magistrates ; " changed " estates of the realm into 
Parliaments of virtual representation ; " and trans- 
formed " holy Church into a national establish- 
ment." f He grieves over the power which the 
Lower House has obtained through the unfavoura- 
ble times ! " The House of Commons is the house 
of a few ; the sovereign is the sovereign of all. The 
proper leader of the people is the individual who 
sits upon the throne.":): 

That very Young England, just fresh from school, 
should entertain these ultra-romantic notions is not 
surprising. But it is more remarkable that Sidonia- 
Disraeli should confess to and sanction them ; for 
even in the " Vindication of the English Consti- 
tution," monarchical opinions were not advanced in 
so repulsive a form as this. The author of " Con- 
ingsby" was, however, too ambitious a man not to 

* "Coningsby," p. 303. f Ibid. p. 359. % Ibid. p. 345. 



"Young England" and "Coningsby" 213 

meet the views of the younger generation on this 
point. Utterances like these about the power due 
to a sovereign always reach the right address ; a 
good word finds a good place. The perpetual flat- 
tery of crowned heads is a feature which pervades 
all Disraeli's writings. He began it in "Vivian 
Grey," by complimenting George IV. on his dignity, 
his perfect and eloquent art of bowing. In " The 
Young Duke " he again extolled the extraordinary 
amiability and sparkling wit of this king, whom, 
after his death, he ridiculed as a " worn-out volup- 
tuary, who desired but one thing of his Ministers, 
peace and quiet." In " Coningsby " he flatters 
Louis Philippe, with whom he was obviously person- 
ally acquainted, immoderately, though he must have 
been repugnant to him as a citizen-king ; he makes 
Sidonia speak of the permanence of his government, 
and say that it is a definitive victory over the repub- 
lic ; it is even in relation to him that he proclaims 
the doctrine of the restored divinity of kings. Fi- 
nally, the following year, in " Sybil," Disraeli falls 
into a perfect ecstasy about the grace and dignity 
of Queen Victoria at the time of her accession. In 
these exaggerated theories we must not, of course, 
forget to separate what is said from policy from 
real political conviction. The ultra-monarchical 
sentiments which Disraeli professes accord well 
with the value he places on imagination as a politi- 



214 Lord Beaconsfield. 

cal motive. He perceives that the mass of the peo- 
ple understand only the monarchical form of gov- 
ernment, and comprehend neither the strict Parlia- 
mentary nor the republican form. The multitude 
readily imagine themselves to be ruled by a king or 
queen, but they cannot connect any ideas with con- 
stitutional government. They follow the family 
affairs of a royal house with far greater interest than 
an abstract political event. " The women — one-half 
the human .race, at least — care fifty times more," 
as Bagehot truly observes, " for a marriage than a 
ministry." * As a dignitary, as leader of society, 
as the representative of stability amidst all political 
changes, the constitutional sovereign of England 
has always maintained his significance. Even au- 
thors of the most advanced Liberal opinion have al- 
ways admitted that it is a great advantage that con- 
stitutional royalty " enables our real rulers to change 
without heedless people knowing it." f But there 
is a long way between this and the recognition of a 
divine character in royalty. What appears to be 
concealed under all Disraeli's mystical expressions 
is the hope that the Crown might regain the sort of 
independence that it had, for example, under Fred- 
erick the Great in Prussia. It sometimes appears 
as if he wished to remind the Crown that it must 

* Bagehot, " The English Constitution," p. 63. f Ibid. p. 80. 



"Young England" and "Coningsby." 215 

defend itself vigorously against the claims of the 
favoured classes, and seek its strength in the broad, 
popular foundation on which it rests ; but these 
democratic ideas in his case, as a stereotyped Tory, 
never go very far. The glorification of the royal 
prerogative in " Coningsby " seems to be, in the 
first place, intended for the possessor of it, in order 
to gain favour for the author, and next for the de- 
lectation of Young England. 

There was another point on which it was easier 
and more natural for Disraeli to sympathize with 
the retrograde sympathies of his young staff. This 
was the taste for forms and ceremonies which the 
members of it had imbibed from the religious ritual 
at the universities ; and the sentiment was strength- 
ened when they found that all secular ceremonial, 
national costumes, ancient usages, fetes, processions, 
and the like, were vanishing from their noble cas- 
tles. I have already pointed out that Disraeli has a 
fantastic taste for the outward and visible sign of a 
cause or an idea — for free masonic ceremonial ; and 
this taste formed a point of contact with ritualism. 
His liking for it was not deep, it did not reach the 
religious heart of the subject ; to this Disraeli was 
entirely a stranger — so much so that it was reserved 
for him as Prime Minister, in 1874, in spite of the 
opposition of his colleagues, to carry a Bill intended 
to put a stop to ritualism in the Church of England. 



216 ' Lord Beaconsfield. 

On this point also, therefore, Disraeli to some ex- 
tent met his young followers by laying great stress 
on the points on which they were agreed. 

In "Coningsby" the following conversation oc- 
curs : — 

" ' Henry thinks that the people are to be fed by 
dancing round a May-pole.' 

" ' But will the people be more fed by not dancing 
round a May-pole ? ' 

" ' Obsolete customs ! ' 

" ' And why should dancing round a May-pole be 
more obsolete than holding a chapter of the Gar- 
ter?' 

" ' The spirit of the age is against such things.' 

" ' And what is the spirit of the age? ' 

"< The spirit of utility.'" * 

As the reader will perceive, hatred of utilitarian- 
ism is the element which binds Disraeli and the rit- 
ualists together. Other conversations in Disraeli's 
novels are in the same tone. The young men wish 
to see more form and ceremony introduced into 
life ; they explain forms and ceremonies as wit- 
nesses of the highest instincts of our nature; and the 
author himself takes occasion to point out that, 
under the influence of the highest and most earnest 
feelings, man always takes refuge in forms and cere- 

*" Coningsby," p. 134. 



"Young- England" and "Coningsby." 217 

monies, for the excited imagination involuntarily 
appeals to the imagination of others, and seeks to 
find expression for it beyond the sphere of daily 
routine. Here, again, we have stress laid on imagi- 
nation as the beginning, end, and aim of popular 
movements. 

According to the opinion of the author, a new 
Tory party might be formed on the basis of the 
Tory sentiments and Tory dreams propounded in 
this book — a party which was not to be out and out 
Conservative, but which, when any one appealed 
to Conservative principles, should promptly ask: 
" What do you wish to conserve ? " The previously 
existing Conservative party, according to "Con- 
ingsby," was chiefly recruited from those whose 
idea of politics consisted in £1200 a year, paid 
quarterly. The ideas of these persons are thus 
described : "To receive ,£1200 per annum is govern- 
ment ; to try to receive ^1200 per annum is oppo- 
sition ; to wish to receive £1200 per annum is am- 
bition." * Young England, with its youthful and 
pathetic enthusiasm, and its political earnestness, 
was to sweep away all this stupidity, and to place 
genius and faithfulness to conviction at the helm. 

* " Coningsby," p. 261. 
10 



CHAPTER XV. 

" SYBIL." 

The question with which "Coningsby" concludes 
contains the political problem of the hour. Just a 
year after its publication, Disraeli had another 
novel ready, quite as important, which, as a con- 
trast to the other, turned on the social problem. 
" Coningsby " had treated of two generations, the 
new work was " Sybil, or The Two Nations/' 

What were these two nations ? Not the English 
and any other of the rival nations of Europe, but 
the two nations into which the English people and 
all others are divided — the nations of the poor and 
the rich. For the first and only time, Disraeli de- 
parted from his custom of seeking his heroes in the 
most wealthy circles, and interested himself in the 
cares and opinions of those who work for their 
bread. " Sybil " is the fulfilment of the promise 
contained in the speech on the Chartist cause, by 
its confession of sympathy with the Chartists ; it 
is an attempt to open the eyes of England to the 
miserable condition of its lowest population, and to 
bespeak indulgence for the political errors which 

218 



"Sybil" 219 

have resulted from it. Through the mediation of 
a friend, Disraeli had got sight of the whole cor- 
respondence between Feargus O'Connor, leader of 
the Chartists and editor of the Northern Star, and 
the other leaders and agents of the movement. He 
had also travelled throughout England, and visited 
the localities in which he intended to lay the scene, 
and had thus been compelled to study the poverty 
of the country. He described what he had seen, 
not only without exaggeration, but, as he states, he 
softens down the actual facts, for he felt that, if he 
stated the whole truth, he would scarcely be believed. 

He gives a picture of one of those pleasantly 
situated little English villages, which look to the 
traveller like a smiling patch of colour among the 
surrounding green hills and gardens. He describes 
the interior of one of these villages: the holes in 
the roofs through which the rain pours; the stinking 
manure-heaps around the house, and even close to 
the door; no fire on the hearths, even in winter; 
and the space so narrow that the poor mother, 
even in the pangs of childbirth, is often surrounded 
by the whole family, from her husband's parents to 
the children, whose inevitable presence causes her 
no less pain than childbirth itself. 

Eight shillings a week are labourers' wages, and 
it is impossible for a man with a family to live on 
eight shillings a week. The wife works as well 



220 Lord Beaconsfield. 

as the husband. When the poor man returns from 
his day's work, he finds no home, no fire, no meal 
prepared ; his wife is either not come home, or is 
so tired out with field labour that she must lie 
down on the bed, or she is wet through and has 
no change of clothes. And in contrast to this 
wretchedness, there is the cold, philosophic noble- 
man to whom the seat belongs, which has given 
its name to the village, and whose one idea is how 
to get rid of this troublesome tenantry ; he builds 
no new cottages, and allows the existing ones to 
fall into decay ; he considers that emigration on a 
grand scale is probably the only remedy for these 
evils; and is, of course, indignant when the poor 
man now and then seeks forgetfulness in the public- 
house. 

Disraeli goes from the country to the town, and 
presents a picture of the manufacturing towns, in 
which want and degradation exceed that in the 
villages. He shows us the famished artisan, whom 
machinery has reduced to abject poverty, at work 
at his loom in the early morning in an attic ; his 
grumbling wife embittered by hunger, and almost 
exasperated with her husband; the starving little 
ones lying awake in bed. And this man is not 
ignorant or incapable. They have dared to tell 
him that the interests of capital and labour are 
identical, while he and the 600,000 other hand- 



"Sybil" 221 

loom weavers in the country, in spite of manly- 
struggles, are daily sinking deeper in poverty, in 
proportion as the manufacturer increases his wealth. 

" When the class of the nobility were supplanted 
in France," says this man, " they did not amount in 
number to one-third of us hand-loom weavers ; yet 
all Europe went to war to avenge their wrongs, 
every State subscribed to maintain them in their 
adversity, and when they were restored to their own 
country, their own land supplied them with an im- 
mense indemnity. Who cares for us? Yet we have 
lost our estates. Who raises a voice for us ? Yet 
we are at least as innocent as the nobility of France. 
We sink among no sighs except our own. And if 
they give us sympathy, what then ? Sympathy is 
the solace of the poor ; but for the rich there is com- 
pensation."* 

We are taken into the streets of the manufactur- 
ing town, and come to houses where old women take 
new-born babes for threepence a week, and give 
them back every evening to their mothers, when 
they return from the factories " to the dung-heaps 
or holes which they call their homes." The nurses 
thrive on this trade, for their outlay is not great — 
opium and syrup, mixed into some kind of national 
elixir. This drink effectually quiets the little ones, 

*" Sybil," p. 134. 



222 Lord Beaconsfield. 

and sends them slowly and surely to the grave. " In- 
fanticide is practised as extensively and as legally 
in England as it is on the banks of the Ganges; a 
circumstance which apparently has not yet engaged 
the attention of the Society for the Propagation of 
the Gospel in Foreign Parts."* 

And yet there are children whose vitality survives 
both starvation and poison, unnatural mothers and 
Satanic nurses. We are introduced to such a crea- 
ture under the fine-sounding name of Devilsdust. 
We learn his previous history. He didn't thrive, 
but he wouldn't die. When he was two years old, 
and the nurse had lost sight of the mother and the 
weekly pay,. he was sent out to play in the streets, 
in the hope that he might be run over. But this 
hope failed. All his little playfellows disappeared 
one after the other. " Playing " in the streets for 
three months was generally sufficient to get rid of 
the whole half-naked, bare-footed crew between two 
and five years. Some were run over, others lost ; 
some took fevers, crept into their cellars, had a 
dram of brandy given them, and died ; Devilsdust 
was the toughest of them all. He had nothing to 
eat but what he could get for himself, and he shared 
the street refuse with the dogs ; but pale and 
stunted as he was, he kept alive. 



# << 



Sybil," p. 113. 



"Sybil." 223 

We descend into still lower depths, into the coal- 
mines. " Bands of stalwart men, broad-chested and 
muscular, wet with toil, and black as the children of 
the tropics. Troops of youth, alas ! of both sexes, 
though neither their raiment nor their language in- 
dicates the difference — all are clad in male attire ; 
and oaths that men might shudder at, issue from 
lips born to breathe words of sweetness. Yet these 
are to be, some are, the mothers of England ! But 
can we wonder at the hideous coarseness of their 
language, when we remember the savage rudeness 
of their lives? Naked to the waist, an iron chain 
fastened to a belt of leather runs between their legs 
clad in canvas trousers, while on hands and feet an 
English girl, for twelve, sometimes for sixteen, hours 
a day, hauls and hurries tubs of coal up subterra- 
nean roads, dark, precipitous, and plashy ; circum- 
stances that seem to have escaped the notice of the 
Society for the Abolition of Negro Slavery. Those 
worthy gentlemen, too, appear to have been singu- 
larly unconscious of the sufferings of the little trap- 
pers, which was remarkable, as many of them were 
in their own employ." * 

And as a set-off against this state of things, on 
the one hand there is the Manchester wisdom, which, 
with an air of importance, gives lectures to the work- 

* "Sybil," p. 161. 



224 Lord Beaconsjield. 

ing classes (in districts where, on an average, the 
working man dies at eighteen), and tells him that 
now he has a pair of worsted stockings, while Henry 
VIII. had none, and that therefore the condition of 
the lower classes is gradually improving ; and, on 
the other hand, there is the brutality of the nobles, 
which is represented in "Sybil" by Lord Marney, 
whose war-cry is "war against the cottages," and 
who thinks the levelling tendencies of the age so 
dangerous that he even rates vehemently against 
railways, and the frivolity of the young men in good 
society who lose their money in betting at the Der- 
by, frequent the clubs, are young yet blasees, hand- 
some yet worn out, wealthy yet in debt. 

It might be supposed, from this description, that 
the prevailing tone of the book is lachrymose, senti- 
mental, and bitter; but so little is this the case, 
that, to Disraeli's credit, it is pervaded by a happy 
humour, sometimes pathetic, sometimes sarcastic, 
but always in good taste and well sustained. It cul- 
minates in the description of Wodgate, a town of 
smithies, where hammer and axe reign supreme, and 
in which there is no public building of any sort, 
neither church, school, theatre, nor assembly room. 
The people of Wodgate spend their lives alternately 
in exhausting labour, and Saint Monday joviality, 
which includes Tuesday ; they are so ignorant that 
many of the inhabitants do not know their own 



"Sybil." 225 

names, very few can spell them ; so neglected that 
it is rare to find a person who knows how old he is, 
still rarer to find a boy who has seen a book, or a 
girl a flower. As for religion, they have a dim no- 
tion that we ought to believe in our Lord and 
Saviour, Pontius Pilate, who went about the world 
accompanied by Moses, Goliath, and the other 
Apostles. They obey, as their self-elected ruler, an 
old master smith, whom they call " the bishop ; " he 
is hard, but just, rasps the ears of his apprentices 
with his file when they are unskilful at their work, 
and marries young couples in the only valid fashion 
at Wodgate, by sprinkling salt on a joint of roast 
meat, and reading the Lord's Prayer over it back- 
wards. He is the highest authority at Wodgate, 
and rules everybody, except his wife, who is far 
sharper than he is. 

It is on this broad and powerfully painted back- 
ground that the scene of the novel is laid. It is sim- 
ple, as is generally the case with Disraeli. Charles 
Egremont, a young man of a noble family, after a 
youth in which he did not in any way distinguish 
himself, is, in 1837, elected a member of Parliament; 
and while staying in the country, meets, near the 
ruins of an old abbey belonging to his brother, two 
men, with whom he enters into conversation, and 
who greatly surprise him by the originality of their 
views on the social and political condition of Eng- 
10* 



226 Lord Beaconsfield. 

land. They are, as it appears, Stephen Morley, a fa- 
natical but very clever self-taught man, editor of a so- 
cialist newspaper, and Walter Gerard, a simple work- 
ing man, but a type of the noble Saxon peasant race, 
a man of clear head and great energy, born to be 
a leader of a Radical working men's party. They 
are only accidentally in the neighbourhood with 
Gerard's daughter, who wanted to see the abbey. 
Egremont has just been pondering, with the ruins 
of the abbey in view, how it is that the people of 
the district have taken to burning the stacks of his 
brother, Lord Marney, while hay and corn was 
threatened with no such danger in the times of the 
old Catholic abbeys. This naturally turns the con- 
versation between him and Gerard to the subject 
of the rule of the monks contrasted with the govern- 
ment of the present day. Gerard extols the monks ; 
they did not possess any private property, nor lay 
by, nor leave money by will ; neither were they 
absent for years, like the present landowners — on 
the contrary, they never left the abbey ; they built 
and planted for posterity, founded libraries and 
schools, showed kindness to the poor of the neigh- 
bourhood. Gerard is a Catholic, but the question 
with him is not a religious one, it is one of right. 
The most conspicuous result of the Reformation, in 
his opinion, was that the monasteries were attacked, 
desolated, plundered to an unprecedented extent, 



11 Sybil" 227 

and the treasures of the monks were distributed 
among the plunderers so as to found, in a pecuniary 
sense, a new aristocracy. Morley agrees with Ge- 
rard, but what he most regrets in the destruction of 
the old abbeys is that with them the last English 
type of a society with a community of goods disap- 
peared ; instead of association, which is the essence 
of society, England has now nothing but isolation. 

" In great cities men are brought together by the 
desire of gain. They are not in a state of co-opera- 
tion, but of isolation, as to the making of fortunes ; 
and for all the rest, they are careless of neighbours. 
Christianity teaches us to love our neighbours as 
ourselves ; modern society acknowledges no neigh- 
bour."* 

The words of both Gerard and Morley make a 
great impression on Egremont, and he is still more 
moved when Gerard's daughter Sybil, whose voice, 
as she sang her evening hymn to the Virgin, had 
been heard as she sat apart among the ruins, drew 
near to the men. Like all Disraeli's heroines, she 
is an ideal of beauty, gentleness, and enthusiasm ; 
the author has not succeeded in endowing her with 
very distinctive features, but she fills her place as 
the incarnation of the hopes and nobleness of mind 
of the lower classes. 

* "Sybil," p. 76. 



228 Lord Beacons 'field. 

Egremont resolves, partly because he longs to be 
near Sybil, partly to study the life and circum- 
stances of the factory workers, to settle for a time 
under an assumed name, in the district where Ge- 
rard lives. We are now shown the rise and progress 
of the Chartist movement ; we make acquaintance 
with the ideas of its leaders and the masses ; and 
the novel which, like all Disraeli's, connects itself 
with actual events not far distant, describes the 
handing in of the National Petition to Parliament. 
How it was received has already been told. The 
impression made by its reception on the personages 
in the novel may be imagined. What a disappoint- 
ment for Sybil, who had so firm a belief that that 
day would have grand results! Sad at heart, she 
opens the paper next morning, which contains the 
report of the proceedings of Parliament. It was a 
heavy task to read it. Then her face suddenly 
brightens up. " Yes, there was one voice that had 
sounded in that proud Parliament, that, free from 
the slang of faction, had dared to express immortal 
truths ; the voice of a noble, who, without being a 
demagogue, had upheld the popular cause ; had 
pronounced his conviction that the rights of labour 
were as sacred as those of property ; that if a differ- 
ence were to be established, the interests of the liv- 
ing wealth ought to be preferred." * 

* "Sybil," p. 337- 



"Sybil." 229 

It was Egremont who made the speech, but it is 
plain that it was no superfluous modesty which 
prevented Disraeli from sounding his own praises 
through the beautiful lips of his heroine. The word 
" noble " is the sole slender bulwark to prevent the 
author and hero melting into one. 

To those around him Egremont seems to be the 
advocate of Chartism ; in reality, however, he con- 
siders it to be a movement without a leader, and his 
principles are laid before the reader in his conversa- 
tions with Sybil. He reminds her that her knowl- 
edge of the upper classes is derived from books, 
not from experience, and tells her that since these 
books were written, a great change has taken place. 
" '■ If there be a change/ said Sybil, ' it is because in 
some degree the people have learnt their strength.' " 
Egremont gently begs her to dismiss this fancy. 
" The people are not strong ; the people never can 
be strong. Their attempts at self-vindication will 
end only in their suffering and confusion. It is civ- 
ilization that has effected, that is effecting, this 
change. It is that increased knowledge of them- 
selves that teaches the educated their social duties. 
There is a dayspring in the history of this nation, 
which perhaps those only who are on the mountain- 
tops can as yet recognize. You deem you are in 
darkness, and I see a dawn. The new generation 
of the aristocracy of England are not tyrants, not 



230 Lord Be aeons fie Id. 

oppressors, Sybil, as you persist in believing. Their 
intelligence, better than that, their hearts, are open 
to the responsibility of their position. . . . They 
are the natural leaders of the people, Sybil ; believe 
me, they are the only ones."* 

These words, in accordance with Disraeli's pecu- 
liarity as an author, contain the gist of the book 
reduced to a formula. They occur about the mid- 
dle of the novel, and the latter half is intended to 
prove their truth. The Trades Unionists, who have 
seen their hopes of constitutional reforms annihi- 
lated, enter into a sort of conspiracy throughout the 
country ; the moderate leaders are carried away by 
the more violent, and soon disturbances take place. 
The band to which Gerard belongs is imprisoned, 
and Egremont succeeds with difficulty in releasing 
Sybil. In the country, the " bishop " and his flock 
have risen ; this wild mob assassinates Egremont's 
wicked brother, Lord Marney, and so the hero suc- 
ceeds to the title ; they storm a castle, in which 
proofs are discovered of Gerard's title to large * 
estates, and thus they help the heroine to an im- 
mense dowry ; all the bad and ill-conducted persons 
die violent deaths, the Socialist editor among them ; 
the good ones are happily united. The childish and 
conventional optimism with which Disraeli's novels 

" Sybil," p. 319. 



"Sybil." 231 

finish up, is almost irritating to the reader, but it is 
a feature to which he has to accustom himself. 

The strong point of the book, as a work of fiction, 
is the series of well-drawn characters : the high aris- 
tocratic society, the young factory workers of both 
sexes, in whose rough naivett there is a marked in- 
dividuality, finally the " bishop " and his brother, a 
London attorney, who supports him without choos- 
ing to acknowledge the relationship ; all these vari- 
ous groups are well conceived and truthfully drawn. 
In the pair last mentioned, especially, Disraeli is 
very successful in depicting lawless violence and 
worldly wisdom, and in throwing light on each by 
the contrast. There is the same contrast in "Al- 
roy," between the relentless fanaticism of the Rabbi 
Jabaster, and the sage epicurean philosophy of his 
brother Honan ; and in both cases it produces great 
dramatic effect. The character of Morley, the 
Socialist, is altogether a failure. In the first place, 
he is sacrificed to the special tendency of the book; 
for in order to prove the necessity that the people 
should be led by the aristocracy, the plebeian leader 
has to be made wicked, and makes an attempt to 
assassinate Egremont out of jealousy in a love 
affair. In the second place, Morley is spoiled by 
Disraeli's taste for the melodramatic and bombastic. 
In his dying moments, with a bullet in his breast, 
he makes a long theatrical speech to Egremont 



232 Lord Beaconsjield. 

which ends thus : " Your star has controlled mine : 
and now I feel I have sacrificed life and fame — 
dying men prophesy — for your profit and honour." * 

An author who was intending to train himself for 
a Parliamentary speaker, had better have been on 
his guard against the rhetoric ever ready to flow 
from his pen, even at the most inappropriate places. 

Politically, this novel follows in the track of 
" Coningsby," but with more steam on. The two 
old parties are still more plainly told that their day 
is over, and that there is no essential difference 
between them. The Chartists, it is said, had long 
ceased to distinguish between the two parties who 
formerly and at the present time were contending 
for power. What is the principle that makes the 
difference between the noble lord who resigns his 
portfolio, and the right honourable gentleman who 
accepts it ? Here, as in " Coningsby," the British 
Parliamentary system is vehemently attacked, its 
government by majority is characterized as power 
in the hands of a few dozen " unknown and anony- 
mous blockheads," who form the difference in num- 
bers between parties, and whose favour is gained 
by the promise of a peerage, or a baronetcy, or an 
invitation to a court ball for their wives. " Such 
a system may suit the balanced interests and the 

* "Sybil," p. 482. 



"Sybil" 233 

periodical and alternate command of rival oligar- 
chical connections ; but it can subsist only by the 
subordination of the sovereign and the degradation 
of the multitude, and cannot accord with an age 
whose genius will soon confess that power and the 
people are both divine." * 

It is also prophesied again and again that Tory- 
ism will rise from the grave in which it has lain 
since the death of Bolingbroke, in order to proclaim 
to the world with a mighty voice " that power has 
but one duty — to secure the welfare of the masses." 

There are passages in this book which remind one 
of Lassalle. 

* " Sybil," p. 44. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE CORN LAWS AND THE CONTEST WITH PEEL. 

THE fourth decade of the present century opened 
stormily in Great Britain. A general discontent 
and restlessness had taken possession of the people. 
Bad harvests, hard winters, the rigid Poor Law, the 
Chartist movement, with the burning of stacks that 
followed, disturbances, and riots, kept the lower 
classes in a perpetual fever. Chartist petitions were 
continually being presented to Parliament ; the one 
handed in in May, 1842, had over 3,300,000 signa- 
tures, and as they shared the fate of the National 
Petition, two attempts on the life of the Queen were 
made in three months. High prices and distress 
excited a rebellion in Wales ; a secret society, called 
" Rebecca and her Daughters," insolently bade de- 
fiance to the authorities ; and the state of things in 
the autumn of 1843 was officially described as " ut- 
terly lawless." But nothing equalled the distress 
and the spirit of rebellion in Ireland. The popula- 
tion of that country, destitute of trade or manufac- 
tures, was exclusively devoted to agriculture, and 
the peasantry of the over-populous island had sunk 

234 



The Corn Laws and the Contest with Peel. 235 

into the most abject wretchedness through high 
rents and great competition for land. The people's 
diet consisted exclusively of potatoes, and in most 
districts, begging seemed to be their chief source of 
gain. The desperation of the famishing people was 
so great that the landowners seldom ventured to 
live amongst their tenantry, and, of course, the ex- 
isting evils were only increased by absenteeism. To 
all this social ferment, political agitation must be 
added, for just at this period O'Connell was strain- 
ing every nerve in a crusade for the Repeal of the 
Union, and holding meetings, attended by an ever- 
increasing number of people — once 300,000 were 
present, and on another occasion 1,200,000, while in 
every chapel enthusiastic and fanatical priests made 
collections for the purposes of agitation. He was 
indicted as a conspirator, and in the two first in- 
stances, sentenced with unjust severity ; he was, 
therefore, of course, more passionately revered by 
the people than ever ; on the last occasion he was 
fully acquitted, a circumstance but little adapted to 
increase respect for the Government. 

The agitation, however, which pervaded the coun- 
try was not confined to these movements of the 
revolutionary and Radical party. A far more im- 
portant agitation had been stirred up among the 
educated and mercantile middle classes against the 
Corn Laws by the powerful eloquence of Richard 



236 Lord* Beacons field. 

Cobden, and arising out of the Anti-Corn Law 
League. This league, after an existence of a few 
years, had a million sterling at its command, and 
with " cheap bread " for its watchword, sought to 
incite the people to oppose a system of legislation, 
the result of which, on an average, was described by 
the Free Traders to be to make bread dearer by 
;£ 1 0,000,000, for the sole benefit of 16,000 land- 
owners and farmers. 

The Chartists were at first very cool, or even hos- 
tile, to the Liberal agitation ; they openly asserted 
that " cheap bread " would practically result in an 
agitation for " cheap labour." But by degrees, dis- 
tress compelled them to give up their distrust of, 
and opposition to, the Liberals, and when they and 
the Irish joined the Free Trade movement, it grew 
stronger and stronger, and soon became nearly irre- 
sistible. 

The Tory party had taken the helm in 1 841. Sir 
Robert Peel had succeeded Lord Melbourne as 
Prime Minister. He was then at the summit of his 
fame ; he was not only the most powerful, but the 
most popular man in England ; he was held to be 
what Disraeli had called him at his election at 
Shrewsbury during the same year, " the greatest 
statesman of his age ; " and it was the general im- 
pression that he would retain his power until his 
death. 



The Corn Laws and the Contest with Peel. 237 

Party interests alone would have induced Disraeli 
to support Peel ; in the " Runnymede Letters," in 
which he had loaded most of the other politicians 
with taunts, he had alluded to Peel in touching 
words as the hope of the nation. About 1840 also 
he spoke of him in his speeches and writings with 
an admiration which not seldom approaches flat- 
tery ; he seems at first to have regarded him as his 
trump card. He probably cherished a hope that 
Peel would offer him a place in his cabinet, if only a 
subordinate one— an Under-Secretaryship of State, 
for instance, with which Contarini Fleming began 
his career ; but of course, he was too wise as well as 
too proud to do anything which might be construed 
into asking for it. But Peel overlooked his ardent 
follower; it was not his strong point to discern 
ability before it had been discovered by all the 
world, and in this case there seems to have been an 
antipathy also. Disraeli swallowed his disappoint- 
ment, continued, with unchanged attitude and 
faithfulness to party, to support Peel during the 
two following years, and even glorified him in 
"Coningsby." It was a bad habit of Peel's to treat 
his supporters with a repelling coldness, as if they 
were conquered subjects, and to reserve all the ur- 
banity and winning qualities at his command for his 
opponents. For some years Disraeli submitted to 
this treatment with perfect discipline. Yet we can 



238 - Lord Beaconsfield. 

scarcely doubt that even from the beginning, there 
was on his part also a keen antipathy to the states- 
man whose follower he was. Not that there was 
any feeling of rivalry — there scarcely could be this 
between a young member of Parliament and the 
first man in the country ; what he felt was the aver- 
sion of the man of the choleric temperament to the 
phlegmatic, of the man of quick and keen temper 
to universal and seldom genuine bonkommie, the 
hatred of an original nature for routine, the con- 
tempt of the imaginative politician for the un- 
imaginative. As early as in 1829, Disraeli had given 
the following characteristic description in "The 
Young Duke : " — " Mr. Peel is the model of a Minis- 
ter, and improves as a speaker; though, like most of 
the rest, he is fluent without the least style. He 
should not get so often in a passion either, or, if 
he do, should not get out of one so easily. His 
sweet apologies are cloying. His candour; he will 
do well to get rid of that." * 

When we find the same estimate of Peel reap- 
pearing in 1845, we may conclude that no essential 
change had taken place in it during the intervening 
years. 

Disraeli was not made for a partisan who is ready 
to renounce all independence and criticism, and he 

* "The Young Duke," p. 287. 



The Com Laws and the Contest with Peel. 239 

was still less inclined to submission when his adhe- 
sion was rewarded with thanklessness and outbreaks 
of haughty superiority from one whom he did not 
consider in his heart to be his superior either in 
general talent or political ability. Respect for Sir 
Robert Peel hung like a yoke round the necks of 
his followers ; his position as Prime Minister, his 
dignity and his mastery in Parliamentary debate, 
made it difficult to conceive that any one of them 
could venture to criticise him. Disraeli resolved to 
throw off the yoke. The action of the Government 
had appeared to him, in more than one instance, 
not very statesmanlike, and feeling himself born to 
be a leader, he ventured, as such men did in the 
olden time in Scandinavia, to challenge the strong- 
est giant to single combat for the leadership of the 
host of his followers. As he could not get forward 
in company with Peel, he must try to do so as his 
opponent. 

Extraordinary courage was required to enter on 
the contest. When, in 1843, Disraeli for the first 
time attacked Sir Robert Peel, under cover of an 
extra polite question relating to Eastern affairs, the 
effect produced on members was one of simple as- 
tonishment ; they looked at one another, and asked 
each other, so to speak, if they had heard aright. 
The question was curtly and coldly turned off by 
Sir Robert Peel. But a few days after, the same 



240 * Lord Beaconsfield. 

irrepressible speaker rose again, and asserted that 
Sir Robert Peel's policy towards Ireland was pre- 
cisely that for which he had so strenuously attacked 
the previous Ministry, and precisely the opposite of 
that which he had recommended as leader of the 
Opposition. He did not blame the Minister for 
this by any means ; if he was of opinion that the 
policy he had previously advocated was not such 
as a Minister can adopt, he had only acted reason- 
ably and rightly in giving it up as soon as he was 
at the helm. Only he (Disraeli) must draw the con- 
clusion from it that, in relation to Irish politics, 
those who supported the right honourable gentle- 
man were now left to themselves. This was the 
style, a polite and cool sarcastic style, well adapted 
for the skirmish which generally precedes a collision. 
As to the matter itself, it may be observed that 
Disraeli has always recommended forbearance and 
kindness as the best means of pacifying Ireland, and 
has always declared it to be in accordance with old 
Tory tradition, as well as the duty of his party, " to 
govern Ireland in accordance with the policy of 
Charles I. and not that of Oliver Cromwell." 

Not long after, Disraeli renewed his objections 
to the Eastern policy of the Government. In the 
question as to who should occupy the throne of 
Servia, Sir Robert Peel had left Turkey, in respect 
to Russia, entirely in the lurch, and this proceeding 



The Corn Laws and the Contest with Peel. 241 

Disraeli attacked. It was of no use to endeavour to 
conceal from himself the situation of Turkey ; her 
power was broken ; not so much from internal de- 
cay as because she had had a stab in the back. He 
reminded the House that he had before put a ques- 
tion on this subject to the Prime Minister, and, as 
he considered, had put it in Parliamentary language 
with all due respect. To this question the Minister 
had replied with " all that explicitness of which he 
was a master, and all that courtesy which he re- 
served only for his supporters." * 

It was impossible to express bitterness with finer 
irony, and it was a ricochet shot, for it both hit Peel 
just where he exposed himself to attack, namely, 
in his bearing towards his own party, and irritated 
the Tories where their pride was wounded. 

These attacks were only the preliminary skir- 
mishes ; they were the beginnings of a conflict which 
lasted for years, carried on by the attacking party 
with unparalleled persistency, by force and cunning, 
by raillery and pathos, with darts and clubs, weapons 
good and bad, fair and unfair — until the foe suc- 
cumbed, and in his fall lost both his position and 
his party. What did it avail Peel that thirty-five 
years of Parliamentary experience had steeled him, 
and taught him the art of parrying blows ? He 



*. O'Connor's Life of Lord Beaconsfield," p. 251. 
11 



242 Lord Beaconsfield. 

never knew when the attack would be made, nor to 
what point it would be directed. He suddenly heard 
the whizzing of the arrow in the air, and it pene- 
trated wherever there was a joint or a weak point in 
his armour. Of what avail was it for him to assure 
the House, with the utmost indifference, that he 
was not in the least sensitive to the praise or cen- 
sure of the honourable member for Shrewsbury? All 
at once he saw a flash in his adversary's eye, and, like 
a dagger hurled by the hand of an Eastern assassin, 
some cutting sarcasm struck him in what was just 
then his most sensitive part ; and, owing to his long 
Parliamentary career, he had many sensitive points. 
One of those was his relation to the great statesman 
Canning. When Canning, to whom Peel had always 
been united by personal friendship, assumed the 
reins of government after the death of Lord Liver- 
pool, in 1827, and exchanged the previous Metter- 
nich-like policy of Great Britain for a new and manly 
one, which was crowned by the battle of Navarino, 
and won the applause of enlightened Europe, Peel 
deserted him, and placed himself at the head of the 
ignoble opposition against Canning which hastened 
his death. Even when Disraeli was adopting a de- 
cidedly apologetic tone towards the Prime Minister, 
he was not quite ready to exculpate him on this 
point. In "Coningsby," in spite of his vindication 
of Peel, he had confessed that his conduct towards 



The Corn Laws and the Contest with Peel. 243 

Canning, even if it be capable of justification, " may 
perhaps always leave this a painful and ambiguous 
passage in his career." f 

In the beginning of 1845, a member of the Minis- 
try had placed the Government in an odious light 
by a mean and impolitic act. As the attention of 
the Austrian Government was fixed upon Mazzini, 
then residing in England, and his relations with the 
Italian revolutionists, particularly with two brothers 
named Bandiera, living in Corfu, Sir James Graham 
had had Mazzini's letters opened, and had informed 
the Austrian Government of the schemes of the 
brothers ; he was thus the cause of the two Italian 
patriots being enticed by a political agent on to 
Austrian soil, where they were seized and shot. 
The English were universally indignant that a 
British Minister should stoop to perform police 
services for a foreign despotic Power. When the 
subject came before Parliament, Sir Robert Peel, 
in his defence, betrayed unusual irritation. In a 
longer speech which Disraeli made against Graham, 
he made the dry remark in reference to the circum- 
stance, that the Prime Minister had far too large a 
mind, and occupied far too high a position, ever to 
lose his equanimity, but that in a popular assembly 
it was occasionally advantageous to play the part 
of the choleric gentleman. He knew from experi- 
ence that for novices these exhibitions were always 



244 Lord Beacons field. 

somewhat exciting ; he made the remark especially 
for the sake of the younger members, that they 
might not be needlessly alarmed. They need not 
be afraid — the Minister was not going to eat them 
up. And in this tone he went on. It will be ob- 
served that the suspicion as to Peel's candour, 
which had been expressed in " The Young Duke," • 
is here emphasized with taunting ridicule. 

Peel replied with calm superiority. He had 
heard the honourable member assert that the 
warmth with which he had spoken was feigned, 
although he stood there charged with having 
caused the death of two innocent men. "It is 
certainly very possible to manifest great vehemence 
of action, and yet not be in a great passion. On 
the other hand, it is possible to be exceedingly 
cold, indifferent, and composed in your manner, 
and yet to cherish very acrimonious feelings. Not- 
withstanding the provocation of the honourable 
gentleman, I will not deal so harshly with him as he 
has dealt with me. He undertakes to assure the 
House that my vehemence was all pretended, and 
warmth all simulated. I, on the contrary, will do 
him entire justice ; I do believe that his bitterness 
was not simulated, but that it was entirely sin- 
cere." * He never complained, he said, of hostile 

* O'Connor's " Life of Lord Beaconsfield," p. 265. 



The Corn Laws and the Contest with Peel. 245 

conduct ; every one had a right to act as he chose ; 
but he complained of the expression which Disraeli 
had used in the course of his speech, that he had 
spoken in a friendly spirit. He was quite ready in 
debate to meet his adversaries in honourable con- 
flict with open front ; but it was certainly most un- 
becoming, although it might be inevitable, for a 
man to be stabbed in the back from the benches of 
his own party when he least expected it, and ac- 
companied, moreover, with the assurance that it 
was done in a friendly spirit. And with his clear, 
powerful voice he quoted to the House the well- 
known lines in which Canning has paiodied the old 
theme, " God, save me from my friends ! " 

" Give me the avowed, erect, and manly foe ; 
Firm I can meet, perhaps can turn the blow ; 
But of all plagues, good Heaven, Thy wrath can send. 
Save me, oh, save me from the candid friend ! " 

The answer was cutting; it hit the right nail on the 
head, while it laid bare the animosity concealed be- 
neath Disraeli's affected coolness, at the same time 
protesting against his misrepresentation in speaking 
of such a criticism as made in a friendly spirit. But 
let us compare this skirmish with the vigour of the 
ironical attack with which Disraeli, a week after- 
wards, ended a long speech : 

" If the right honourable gentleman may find it 
sometimes convenient to reprove a supporter on his 



246 Lord Be aeons field. 

right flank, perhaps we deserve it. I, for one, am 
quite prepared to bow to the rod ; but really, if 
the right honourable gentleman, instead of having 
recourse to obloquy, would only stick to quotation, 
he may rely upon it it would be a safer weapon. It 
is one he always wields with the hand of a master ; 
and when he does appeal to any authority, in prose 
or verse, he is sure to be successful, partly because 
he seldom quotes a passage that has not previously 
received the meed . of Parliamentary approbation, 
and partly and principally because his quotations 
are so happy. The right honourable gentleman 
knows what the introduction of a great name does 
in debate — how important is its effect, and occa- 
sionally how electrical. He never refers to any 
author who is not great, and sometimes who is not 
loved — Canning, for example. That is a name 
never to be mentioned, I am sure, in the House 
of Commons without emotion. We all admire his 
genius; we all — at least most of us — deplore his 
untimely end ; and we all sympathize with him in 
his fierce struggle with supreme prejudice and sub- 
lime mediocrity, with inveterate foes, and with 
4 candid friends.' The right honourable gentleman 
may be sure that a quotation from such an author- 
ity will always tell — some lines, for example, upon 
friendship, written by Mr. Canning, and quoted by 
the right honourable gentleman. The theme — the 



The Corn Laws and the Contest with Peel. 247 

poet — the speaker — what a felicitous combination ! 
Its effect in debate must be overwhelming; and I 
am sure, were it addressed to me, all that would 
remain for me would be thus publicly to congra- 
tulate the right honourable gentleman, not only 
on his ready memory, but on his courageous con- 
science." * 

In reading this speech, one hears the tone in 
which every sentence was uttered, and seems to see 
the impression it made on the House. At first, 
according to Disraeli's wont, his manner of speaking 
was low and monotonous, his countenance impas- 
sive, grave as a mask, so that it formed the fitting 
background to the unconscious irony of his words. 
The House does not yet know what he is aiming at. 
The beginning of the speech was in a totally differ- 
ent style, and the details of the altercation with 
Peel a week before had been forgotten. Why this 
ironical laudation of upholding party discipline by 
means of quotations ? Then, with a sudden flash, 
Canning's name is mentioned, carelessly thrown in, 
with a " for example," but with a somewhat linger- 
ing emphasis on the word. The speaker becomes 
slightly warmer, and when he expresses his admira- 
tion for the struggle of the late great statesman with 
" sublime mediocrity " — these words spoken without 

*" Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beacon sfield : A Biography," vol. 
i. p. 527. 



248 Lord Be aeons fie Id. 

any preceding pause, but with a fugitive glance at 
Peel — a thrill of eager attention passes through the 
House. This attention is divided between the Prime 
Minister, who, with quiet dignity, but with a some- 
what forced and uncertain smile on his lips, thinks 
he can despise his adversary, and even wishes it to 
be thought that he is amused at his harmless mis- 
chief, and the speaker, who stands there with a 
courage that fears no requital, and an icy coldness 
which the laughter with which his direct ebullitions 
of feeling are always assailed has . long since com- 
municated to him. With one thumb in his arm- 
hole, and without moving a finger of the other 
hand ; by the masterly dumb-show that accompa- 
nies his words ; by a fleeting expression of counte- 
nance ; by a slight intonation of his voice, which is 
fully under his control, he contrives to express a con- 
tempt which good manners and Parliamentary usage 
made it impossible to clothe in words, and treats 
his all-powerful opponent like a helpless victim. 
With cat-like self-restraint Disraeli had at first de- 
clared himself willing to bow beneath the rod, with 
tiger-like caress he had praised Peel's apt quotation, 
but from the Mephistophelian tone you seemed to 
hear the words: "Mediocre man ! false friend ! who 
worried the great Canning to death ; how darest 
thou to adopt his words about friends ? how canst 
thou be so dense, so obtuse, as not to perceive that 



The Corn Laws and the Contest with Peel. 249 

thou standest there with his own branding iron in 
thy hand, and with ludicrous precision stampest it 
on thy own brow?" And the House which, instead 
of this, heard the words : " The theme — the poet — 
the speaker — what a happy combination ! " could 
not suppress a smile, notwithstanding the nervous 
quiver on Peel's lips ; it rose to loud laughter at the 
comic attempts of Peel to conceal his annoyance at 
the offensive hilarity of his party ; was increased by 
the imperturbable gravity of the speaker, and his 
apparent unconsciousness of the effect he was pro- 
ducing; and finally, by the mixed feelings of the 
laughers themselves : the curious sense of annoyance 
that they were laughing at their own stringent lead- 
er ; the relief, for a variety, of having a good laugh 
at him ; the universal love of mischief, and the pleas- 
ure for once of listening to malicious wit. But no 
sooner was the laughter over, than the calm, clear, 
monotonous voice was heard again uttering its pe- 
riods with the cold repose of a machine, as if the 
speaker were far too sublimely lifted above all hu- 
man passions to be in the slightest degree influ- 
enced by what was going on before his eyes. Other 
people could not help laughing; he did not move a 
muscle of his face unless he chose. They could not 
command either their moods or their countenances, 
while he stood, slightly swaying the upper part of 
his body backwards and forwards, hurling forth his 
11* 



250 Lord Beacons field. 

sarcasms with lofty indifference ; he was lashing the 
leader of the Lower House, and the first man in the 
Government, and he was performing the operation 
amidst the involuntary laughter of that leader's own 
party. Oh, he was acquainted with this laughter ! 
He had taken his revenge ; these hilarious gentle- 
men were not men of his strength of mind. 

The subject of greatest interest in England dur- 
ing those years which chiefly occupied the atten- 
tion of Parliament, and excited the passions of the 
people, was the question of Free Trade, or Protec- 
tion, especially the subject of the maintenance, 
alteration, or abolition of the Corn Laws. The To- 
ries, who had raised Sir Robert Peel to power, were 
Protectionists, and Peel had the majority in both 

Houses. Peel was, in the almost unanimous judg- 

v 
ment of those who knew him best, not only a great 

and able statesman, but one entirely actuated by 
love of truth and justice. He had had equal expe- 
rience in the management of English sovereigns 
and English Parliaments, and had a masterly way of 
tuning a political assembly, and making it give forth 
the tones which he desired ; under his leadership it 
was like a violin in the hands of a master. But as a 
politician, he was wanting in principles and in fore- 
sight. It was one of his peculiarities to make obsti- 
nate resistance to every new measure, and when, in 
spite of his opposition, it had become popular, to 



The Corn Laws and the Contest with Peel. 251 

take it up and carry it out to the utmost. This had 
been the case with the measures introduced year 
after year in vain by Sir Samuel Romilly, for the 
mitigation of the barbarous Penal Laws, which Peel, 
as leader of the Conservatives, had always opposed 
as philosophic, sentimental innovations.* The same 
thing had happened in 1829, when he took the 
emancipation of the Catholics, to which he had 
been strongly opposed, into his own hands, and car- 
ried it through. He took the same course now. 
After personally heading the opposition to the 
Anti-Corn Law League, and having sought and 
found support in a Tory party who had placed him 
at their head expressly that he might oppose it to 
the uttermost, in 1845 ne suddenly left his support- 
ers in the lurch, came forward as an advocate from 
conviction of the principle he had so vehemently 
assailed, and connected his name with the necessary 
popular reform. That the abolition of the Corn 
Laws had at that period become an inevitable neces- 
sity, is now the almost universal opinion of those 
who understand the subject, and, as far as I can 
judge, European opinion is entirely in Sir Robert 
Peel's favour. By joining Cobden's party, he shat- 
tered at one blow the organized resistance of the 
Protectionists, and made the triumph of Free Trade 

* Compare G. Brandes, "Die Hauptstromungen in der Literatur 
des 19 Jahrhunderts," vol. iv. p. 49. 



252 Lord Beaconsjield. 

inevitable. But it is not difficult to understand that 
those whose cause he had undertaken did not re-, 
gard the change in a favourable light. He had 
called it the sacred cause of Protection; he had de- 
clared that he would rather be the leader of the 
country gentlemen of England than possess the 
confidence of kings. The men whose confidence he 
had valued more highly than that of the sovereigns 
of Europe, and whom he a few years later disap- 
pointed, could not possibly pass upon him the leni- 
ent judgment of modern political economists. Still, 
apart from mere party interests, Sir Robert Peel's 
course of action, considered from an ideal point of 
view, does not appear to me quite justifiable. That 
a party leader under a Parliamentary Constitution 
should be placed at the helm, can only signify that 
the nation, particularly that portion of it which sup- 
ports him, desires to afford him the opportunity of 
carrying out his principles into practice in legis- 
lation ; if he finds it necessary, as head of the Gov- 
ernment, to change his principles, he is in duty 
bound to resign his office ; for power should be the 
reward of political sagacity, forethought, and suc- 
cess, and he who possesses these qualifications 
should also taste the sweets of power. 

If in this case it had been only the political and 
not also the pecuniary interests of the Tories that 
were at stake, Peel would undoubtedly have found 



The Com Laws and the Contest with Peel. 253 

it possible, with his great Parliamentary influence, 
to gain over his followers by degrees to his altered 
opinions ; but as matters stood, he had no hope of 
getting the Protectionists personally interested in 
the Corn Laws to come round ; he did not even try 
to prepare them for the change by private commu- 
nications, for, eminent and eloquent as he was in 
open debate, he was shy, awkward, and taciturn in 
personal intercourse with his party. 

His Government had begun with some modifica- 
tions in the protective duties, including some unim- 
portant changes affecting agriculture. Although 
Disraeli upheld the Corn Laws, he asserted, in the 
early part of the fourth decade, as a faithful fol- 
lower of Peel, that Free Trade principles were not a 
privilege of the Whigs, were not invented by them, 
but were the good old Tory principles of Pitt. He 
did, it is true, give the phrase " Free Trade" so 
wide a scope that even Protectionists became Free 
Traders, and at the same time he so restricted its 
meaning that absolute Free Traders were only ex- 
crescences of the principle. It must not be forgot- 
ten, he added that the term "Free Trade" was 
formerly used as opposed to the old colonial sys- 
tem, while it is now used by Cobden and his party 
in a totally different sense, and means that you 
shall "contend with open harbours against the hos- 
tile customs tariffs of other countries." By the Free 



254 Lord Beacons field. 

Trade that he advocated, he seems at that period 
to have meant a moderate kind of Protection, or, 
more correctly speaking, he was tacking about, not 
quite clear what Sir Robert Peel had in view, but 
firmly resolved not to betray the cause he had em- 
braced at his election, and which he had promised 
to advocate. But from the moment when Disraeli 
felt certain of what Peel's real intentions were, and 
he foresaw them when no one of his party would 
give credit to his prognostications — he indicated his 
suspicions in his speeches in Parliament against 
Peel, and in the Free Trade debates he took up the 
cause of the ultra-Conservative Protectionists. 

The Tory party soon fell into confusion amidst 
what was taking place ; it split into sections, some 
of which continued their adhesion to Peel from con- 
viction, and some from habit ; while the landowning 
interest looked about for a new and more trust- 
worthy leader. Disraeli, who had early begun to 
place his powers at the service of the landowners, 
and regarded their cause rather as a weapon than 
merely a cause, now practically became their leader. 

The time was come at last when he could gain 
real importance in Parliament ; a speechless, con- 
founded, betrayed, and angry host wanted an organ 
for their passion, a defender of their interests, a 
brain to think and project for them; and there was 
no other than he. He presented himself, without 



The Com Lazvs and the Contest with Peel. 255 

directly offering his services, as mouthpiece of the 
speechless, as head' of those who had lost their 
leader. He had hitherto had only a slender aris- 
tocratic staff. Young England was an excellent 
beginning, but it was only a beginning ; its signifi- 
cance in the first place was not very great, and in 
the second it had more of a social, and to some ex- 
tent literary, than a political, character. Young 
England formed, so to speak, a little court round 
Disraeli ; but in spite of his court, he had been, up 
to this time, " a king without land." The party of 
the landed gentry and the landowners brought him 
the "land " for his pretendership to the crown. It 
was, as before indicated, not a very intelligent set 
which now joined him, but they were members of a 
numerous and influential class. The landed gentry, 
even now, far exceed in numbers any other class 
in the Lower House ; first, because the country 
population sends a number of members for the 
counties ; secondly, because even now, strange as it 
may appear, half the boroughs are represented by 
eminent landowners, for, according to British preju- 
dices, the possession of land confers a far higher 
social standing than trade, manufactures, or learn- 
ing. To represent, therefore, the landowning inter- 
est, means to represent a very powerful- interest, 
a political great power. But this great power often 
requires to have a leader from beyond its borders, 



256 Lord Beaconsfield. 

because . the landowning interest has, as has been 
well set forth by Bagehot, adopted a political watch- 
word which makes it stupid. 

" The counties not only elect landowners, which 
is natural, and perhaps wise, but also elect only 
landowners of their own county, which is absurd. 
There is no free trade in agricultural mind ; each 
county prohibits the import of able men frtom other 
counties. This is why eloquent sceptics — Boling- 
broke and Disraeli — have been so apt to lead the 
unsceptical Tories. They will have people with a 
great piece of land in a particular spot, and of 
course these people generally cannot speak, and 
often cannot think. And so eloquent men who 
laugh at the party come to lead the party." * 

At first sight, Disraeli's position at the head of the 
landowners strikes one as strange and paradoxical. 
He, who had inherited no estate, whose ancestors 
had been legally disqualified from acquiring landed 
property, who was not even a county member ; the 
man who was once a dandy, and now a drawing- 
room lion, the romance writer of great cities, figur- 
ing as the friend of the agricultural labourer, and 
promising protection to the burly farmer ! But on 
closer inspection it was perfectly reasonable, and 
the paradox from Disraeli's point of view was abso- 

* Bagehot's " English Constitution," p. 201. 



The Corn Laws and the Contest with Peel. 257 

lutely logical. From the first he had suffered from 
being half a foreigner in England ; he must above 
all things become thoroughly English, must take 
deep root in English soil. It is for this reason that 
in this case, as in every other in his political career, 
we find him adopting the indigenous English point 
of view. According to the prevailing opinion, the 
townspeople, compared with the agricultural labour- 
ers, were citizens of the world ; this notion was an 
incentive to Disraeli to take the side of the land 
party in every conflict between town and county. 
We have found him saying years before that the 
manufacturers and industrial classes could emigrate 
to Egypt if they pleased, while the agriculturists 
were the true-born patriots without whom no nation 
could prosper. 

It had now become a political rule with Disraeli, 
in order, so to speak, to efface the stain of his birth, 
always and everywhere to advocate the national, or 
rather ultra-national, view ; and he was, therefore, 
predisposed to make that cause his own which bore 
a national superscription as opposed to the cos- 
mopolitanism of the Free Traders, and whose ad- 
vocates were simply national egotists, and cared 
nothing for any nonsense about the brotherhood of 
nations or doctrines about the common interests of 
humanity. Although the Protectionists were per- 
sonally interested in the Corn Laws, the question 



258 Lord Beaconsfield. 

was one of the protection of national produce, and 
Disraeli, who sprang from a foreign stock, made it a 
point of honour, on this occasion and ever after, to 
be, if possible, more English than Englishmen them- 
selves. 

In their zeal for a principle which they soon 
adopted as an absolute one, and almost a religion, 
the Free Traders went so far that they sometimes 
overshot the mark. As, for example, slavery had 
been abolished at great cost, it could only be con- 
sidered reasonable to afford the English planters in 
the West Indies some protection by a duty upon 
the sugar produced in the slave states of America. 
But in 1843, Cobden, on theoretic grounds, brought 
forward a motion for the abolition of the duty. 
Disraeli took occasion to protest that the interests 
of the English colonies would be sacrificed to those 
of the slave states, and to insist that, on the whole 
question, British interests for British statesmen 
should have precedence of all others. 

He thus became the leader of the Protectionists, 
but as yet without personally and nominally occupy- 
ing the vacant post. For this a man of rank was 
required, and he was soon found in Lord George 
Bentinck, an energetic young nobleman, not with- 
out talents, and the first sportsman of the day. He 
was personally convinced of the excellence of the 
protective system, and personally indignant at Peel's 



The Corn Laws and the Contest with Peel. 259 

defection, so he sacrificed his chivalrous tastes to his 
convictions of duty. He sold his stud, gave a last 
longing look at his racers, which always won, and, 
without any ambitious motive, undertook the post 
of general of the scattered Tory forces, with Dis- 
raeli as chief of his staff. 

The point of view from which the present Lord 
Beaconsfield at that time looked at the subject, 
seems to me to have been this: he considered it 
both impolitic and unjust to abolish the duty on 
corn all at once, although he fully perceived that it 
was mischievous ; he had no faith in the beneficial 
working of absolute Free Trade ; in relation to the 
philosophical, scientific Free Traders, he considered 
himself to be the representative of the historical 
school in politics, of which he had been an adherent 
from the first ; he was not blind to the egotism of 
the agricultural party, but he perceived a good deal 
of masked egotism behind the humanitarian watch- 
word of the manufacturers and trading classes, who 
screamed themselves hoarse about the abolition of 
the duty on corn for the sake of the poor, while 
they got as much as possible out of their own work- 
men ; and finally, he hated and despised Sir Robert 
Peel. If the Corn Laws were to be abolished, it 
ought to be done by Cobden, not by a Minister like 
Peel, who was bound by previous pledges. Disraeli 
would not or could not see that Peel was only sacri- 



260 Lord Beaconsfield. 

firing the lesser duty to his party to the greater 
duty to the nation, for he was of opinion that he was 
actuated by the vain motive of wishing to associate 
his name with this great popular economic move- 
ment. There is no part of Disraeli's career which 
has been so much attacked and censured as this. 
I have no desire to defend his unenviable position 
as leader of the guardians of the Corn Laws, distin- 
guished by their broad backs and fat acres. I only 
wish to indicate the light in which he himself saw 
his opposition to Peel as advocate of their abolition. 

Disraeli may also be impugned for having, in the 
long series of speeches which from this time forward 
he made against Peel, always taken the ground of 
making Peel's conversion ridiculous, and having 
never argued the essential question of the working 
of the Corn Laws. " The right honourable gentle- 
man caught the Whigs bathing, and walked away 
with their clothes. He has left them in the full en- 
joyment of their Liberal position, and he is himself 
a strict Conservative of their garments." * 

In another place he is no less sarcastic : " I look 
on the right honourable gentleman as a man who 
has tamed the Shrew of Liberalism by her own tac- 
tics. He is the political Petruchio, who has outbid 
you all." f 

* O'Connor's " Life of Lord Beaconsfield," p. 267. f Ibid. 



The Corn Laws and the Contest with Peel. 261 

In another passage he ironically reproaches the 
Protectionists in a similar strain for complaining of 
Peel's conduct. " There is no doubt," he went on, 
" a difference in the right honourable gentleman's 
demeanour as leader of the Opposition, and as Min- 
ister of the Crown. But that's the old story ; you 
must not contrast too strongly the hours of court- 
ship with the years of possession." * 

And with an orator's intuitive facility of illustra- 
tion, in one of his great speeches he paraphrases 
Peel's position in a parable. 

" Sir, there is a difficulty in finding a parallel to 
the position of the right honourable gentleman in 
any part of history. The only parallel which I can 
find is an incident in the late war in the Levant, 
which was terminated by the policy of the noble 
lord opposite. I remember when that great strug- 
gle was taking place, when the existence of the 
Turkish Empire was at stake, the late sultan, a man 
of great energy and fertile in resources, was deter- 
mined to fit out an immense fleet to maintain his 
empire. Accordingly a vast armament was col- 
lected. It consisted of many of the finest ships 
that were ever built. The crews were picked men, 
the officers were the ablest that could be found, and 
both officers and men were rewarded before they 

* O'Connor's " Life of Lord Beaconsfield," p. 270. 



262 Lord Beaconsfield. 

fought. . There never was an armament which left 
the Dardanelles similarly appointed since the day 
of Solyman the Great. 

" The sultan personally witnessed the departure 
of the fleet ; all the muftis here prayed for the suc- 
cess of the last general election. Away went the 
fleet ; but what was the sultan's consternation when 
the lord high admiral steered at once into the ene- 
my's port ! Now, sir, the lord high admiral, on that 
occasion, was very much misrepresented. He, too, 
was called a traitor ; and he, too, vindicated him- 
self. ' True it is,' said he, ' I did place myself at 
the head of this valiant armada; true it is that my 
sovereign embraced me; true it is that all the muftis 
in the empire offered up prayers for my success ; 
but I have an objection to war. I see no use in 
prolonging the struggle, and the only reason I had 
for accepting the command was that I might termi- 
nate the contest by betraying my master.' And, sir, 
these reasons, offered by a man of great plausibility, 
of vast adroitness, have had their effect, for — you 
may be surprised at it — but I assure you it is a fact, 
which by the way the gallant officer opposite (Com- 
modore Napier) can testify, that he is at this mo- 
ment the First Lord of the Admiralty at Constanti- 
nople, under the new reign." * 

* O'Connor's " Life of Lord Beaconsfield," p. 290. 



The Corn Laws and the Contest with Peel. 263 

It will be observed that all these caustic and 
witty sallies move within the same circle. It is 
Peel's passion for appropriating the ideas of others 
that is ridiculed, his want of originality and princi- 
ple, his betrayal of the party which had raised him 
to power, and to which he had pledged his word ; 
but of the essence of the subject, the real question 
of the right of the aristocratic landowners to tax all 
England for the benefit of the farmers, there is little 
or nothing. It is more than probable that Disraeli, 
even in 1845, foresaw the perils, now coming to the 
front, which threatened English agriculture from 
competition with America, but in the Parliamentary 
debates he dealt exclusively with the formal aspect 
of the question, the renegade conduct of Sir Robert 
Peel. 

Meanwhile, the real question was becoming more 
urgent. Simultaneously with the failure of the^ 
harvest in 1845, i n England and Scotland, the po- 
tato disease broke out in Ireland, and threatened 
the wretched population with famine. Under these 
circumstances, the measure first proposed of admit- 
ting corn free from the colonies was insufficient ; the 
Anti-Corn Law League agitated the question to the 
utmost ; the Whig leaders, who had previously ad- 
vocated a moderate Corn Law, openly declared for 
absolute and immediate abolition ; a large assembly 
in Dublin declared the adhesion of the Irish to the 



264 Lord Beaconsfield. 

Free Trade programme ; and finally, civil war was 
at the doors. Sir Robert Peel then, in January, 
1846, laid a Bill before the Lower House for the to- 
tal abolition of the duty on corn, which, after vehe- 
ment debates for months in both Houses, passed 
into law. 

Peel still maintained his position, but his power 
was shattered. The details relating to his situation 
and that of his opponents may be seen in Lord 
Beaconsfield's " Life of Lord George Bentinck." 
His opponents had hoped to the last moment that 
the Bill would be thrown out in the Lords ; but 
as this hope was frustrated, in great measure by 
the conversion of the Duke of Wellington, hope, 
as Lord Beaconsfield confesses with the candour 
of Contarini Fleming, was succeeded by revenge. 
"The battle itself was lost, but he who by his 
treachery had caused the defeat should at all events* 
suffer for it." 

A whole Parliamentary recess was, as is stated 
in the " Life of Bentinck," spent in devising plans to 
turn Peel out, and in that life the bold intrigues 
may be traced by which his fall was at last effected 
by the author of "Vivian Grey," through the instru- 
mentality of the fanatical and unscrupulous Lord 
George Bentinck, on whom he could fully rely. The 
final plan adopted was as shabby as it was effectual ; 
it consisted in inducing Lord George Bentinck, as 



The Corn Laws and the Contest with Peel. 265 

leader of the Tories, and Lord John Russell, as 
leader of the Whigs, to join in opposing Peel's Bill 
in the interests of public safety in Ireland, on the 
second reading, both Lords having, on the first 
reading, promised their " sincere and hearty sup- 
port." This desperate measure was effectual. In 
June, 1846, Sir Robert Peel was in a minority, and 
laid down his portfolio. 

A man who, like Lord George Bentinck, only 
assumed the leadership of the Tories against his 
will and for a time, was not likely to take Peel's 
place with his former followers. He was, both 
by birth and family connection, as brother-in-law of 
Canning, no less than from his liberal religious 
opinions, a Whig, and had only joined the Tories 
from interest in the corn duties. He had been be- 
sides, from his youth upwards, above all things, a 
sportsman, and when he entered the House late in 
the evening, his red hunting-coat was carelessly con- 
cealed by a light grey paletot. Then he was a hesi- 
tating and laborious speaker. Through him, and, 
so to speak, as his mouthpiece, Disraeli now led the 
Tory party for about a year, until, in 1847, Lord 
George Bentinck withdrew from the leadership, as 
it appears from disapproval of Disraeli's arguments 
about the Bill for the emancipation of the Jews. 
He argued, as usual, for Semiticism, instead of, as 
Bentinck wished, in favour of the principle of relig- 
12 



266 Lord Beaconsfield. 

ious liberty. For a short period, the clique of Tory 
Protectionists, who had fallen with Peel, were with- 
out a leader, for they rebelled against acknowledg- 
ing as their chief the commoner of Jewish extraction 
and dubious notoriety when second in command, 
and who had been formerly a Radical ; but by the 
sudden death of Lord George Bentinck, in 1848, 
Disraeli became the actual advocate as well as 
the elected leader of the party, and had thus sur- 
mounted the first arduous steps on the path to 
power. 

Up to this -time, although leader of the land- 
owners, he had represented the borough of Shrews- 
bury in Parliament. It was necessary to put an 
end to this absurd position. At the request of nu- 
merous electors, he offered himself as a candidate 
for Buckinghamshire, in which county he had be- 
come a landowner by the purchase of the estate of 
Hughenden Manor. In 1847 ne was elected mem- 
ber for the county, by a large number of votes, and 
continued to represent it until 1876, when he retired 
from the House of Commons. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

" TANCRED." 

IN Lord Beaconsfield's " Life of Bentinck," there 
is a passage referring to Peel, in penning which he 
was obviously thinking of himself. " An aristocracy 
hesitates before it yields its confidence, but it never 
does so grudgingly. . . . An aristocracy is rather 
apt to exaggerate the qualities and magnify the im- 
portance of a plebeian leader." * 

Do these words state a fact or express a wish 
and a hint ? The new leader was evidently followed 
with reluctance, sometimes almost with aversion. 
It was his descent that stood most in his way ; on 
every collision with those around him, it had been 
brought up against him, and so it would surely be 
in the future. Disraeli's object was, therefore, to 
attack the prejudice against the Jewish race once 
for all, and so thoroughly to put an end to it, that, 
at all events, as a Christian prejudice, it should for- 
ever be reduced to an absurdity. 

A vigorous attack had been made upon it in 

* " Life of Lord George Bentinck," p. 318. 

267 



268 Lord Beacons field. 

" Coningsby." Sidonia had assigned to the Arabian 
races, as civilized nations, equal rank with the An- 
glo-Saxon and the Greek races, and had adduced 
the advantage enjoyed by the Hebrews among the 
Arab tribes as the oldest race of unmixed blood to 
be found amongst nations dwelling in towns. He 
had said : " An unmixed race, with an organization 
of the first class, is the true aristocracy of nature." 
And even in " Sybil," the main idea which was al- 
ways occupying Disraeli's mind had asserted, itself. 
The following peculiar explanation of the author's 
early sympathies with Catholicism is put into the 
mouth of a Catholic priest : — " The Church of Rome 
is to be respected as the only Hebrseo-Christian 
Church extant ; all other Churches established by 
the Hebrew Apostles have disappeared, but Rome 
remains ; and we must never permit the exaggerated 
position which it assumed in the middle centuries 
to make us forget its early and apostolical character, 
when it was fresh from Palestine, and, as it were, 
fragrant from paradise." * 

It is not, then, for the sake of Rome, but of 
Palestine, that Disraeli has glorified the Romish 
Church. And this explains how at last, in " Lo- 
thair," he almost made a parody on his own works, 
for in that work the Catholic clergy, and the relig- 

* " Sybil," p. 129. 



"Tancred." 269 

ious sentiment which leads people into their arms, 
are portrayed with penetrating knowledge of men 
and cutting satire. It was solely the fragrance from 
Palestine which lingered about the mantles of the 
first bishops of Rome which made Rome so attrac- 
tive to him, until this fragrance was overpowered 
by the odour of incense. 

Now, as before, Disraeli hankered for Palestine. 
It was long since he had beheld the country with 
his bodily eyes, but in imagination he was ever 
making pilgrimages to the East. Since he had 
visited those regions as a young man, the great war 
between Mehemet Ali and the Porte, in 1840, had 
caused the Great Powers to interfere in Eastern af- 
fairs, and attracted the attention of Europe to them, 
and about the same time a number of occurrences 
had taken place which could not fail to affect every 
one who, like Disraeli, had Jewish blood in his 
veins, namely, the fearful persecutions of the Jews 
in Damascus and Rhodes, worse, even, than those of 
medieval times. At Damascus, the sudden disap- 
pearance of an Italian priest had caused the report 
that he had been murdered by the Jews, and a 
Jewish barber confessed, under the torture of five 
hundred blows on the soles of his feet, that the 
Jews used Christian blood in making their Easter 
cakes, and had employed him to murder the priest 
for this purpose. Six respectable Jews were there- 



270 Lord Beacons field. 

fore imprisoned on suspicion ; they were whipped, 
and compelled to stand erect for three days follow- 
ing, and when they fell down from exhaustion, were 
made to get up by thrusts with a bayonet, their 
beards were set fire to, and lights held under their 
noses till their faces were singed ; even their chil- 
dren were shut up and kept on bread and water. In 
vain they appealed to their Scriptures, in which the 
shedding of blood was forbidden, and when one of 
them was daring enough to say that the Christians 
had probably murdered the priest themselves, he 
was bastinadoed till he died. Similar horrors were 
perpetrated about the same time in Rhodes, where 
a Greek boy disappeared in the same mysterious 
manner, and the Jews were accused of putting him 
out of the way ; the only difference was, that in 
this case not the native Christians alone, but the 
European consuls, including the British consul, gave 
the reins to their fanaticism against the Jews, who 
turned out to be entirely innocent.* 

As is well known, the reports of these horrors 
gave rise to Sir Moses Montefiore's first journey to 
the East, where, with indefatigable persistence, he 
effected the release of the imprisoned Jews, and ob- 
tained from the sultan the remarkable firman in 
which he stated his full conviction of the innocence 

* Picciotto, "Sketches of Anglo-Jewish History," p. 347. 



"Tancred" 271 

of the Jews of the misdeeds they had been accused 
of, and for which they had suffered. The sultan 
was more humane than the English consul, who de- 
nounced the Jews in Rhodes, or the French consul, 
who persecuted them at Damascus. 

The author of "Alroy" could not hear of these 
events without being strongly affected by them, and 
in reading the romance which he now wrote about 
the East and the Jewish race, the maddening effect 
of these horrors must be borne in mind. " Conings- 
by " treated of the political, and " Sybil " of the 
social, problem, and " Tancred," the last portion of 
the trilogy, was to treat of the religious question. 

" Tancred " is unquestionably one of the most in- 
teresting and original of Lord Beaconsfield's works. 
It is a serio-comic, ironically mystic book ; on the 
first reading, it seems too absurd to be subjected 
to serious criticism, but one takes it up again, and, 
although it falls asunder into two large fragments, 
its wit and brilliant Oriental scenes and conversa- 
tions dwell in the memory. It comprises, moreover, 
Disraeli's whole field of vision, and ranges between 
the veriest frivolities of high life, an amusing gastro- 
nomic disquisition, and the highest religious pathos 
of which the author is capable, as well as the most 
far-reaching of his political schemes. To these, how- 
ever, at this period, 1847, ^ e gave something of a 
burlesque form, after the manner in which a Hamlet 



272 Lord Beaconsfield. 

or a Brutus betrays or conceals his plans; but he 
has unveiled them since 1874, and striven more and 
more to realize them. It is a book having, Janus- 
like, two faces — the one expressive of impenetrable 
irony, the other of almost pure mysticism ; and the 
contrast is not done away with by diversus respectus, 
for the irony hovers over the mysticism, which is 
the pivot of the book, is to be found in reality in 
the mysticism itself, and thereby hits the Christian- 
religious enthusiasm for crusades, the cause of which 
he apparently advocates. It is usual to speak of 
Lord Beaconsfield's sphinx-like character, and " Tan- 
cred " affords more justification than usual for the 
term ; still, even in this case, it is only mental indo- 
lence to take refuge in the assertion that the book 
is enigmatical, for, if you pay close attention to the 
meaning, the author says plainly enough to the 
orthodox : — If you were consistent, and seriously 
believed what you are always saying that you be- 
lieve, you would all act as enthusiastically, as sim- 
ply, as devoutly, as madly as my hero. And if you 
were sincere, you would acknowledge that it is to 
the Jews and to Judaism that you are indebted for 
all your most precious treasures, and instead of 
contemning and persecuting them, you would hold 
them in high esteem. But you are neither consist- 
ent nor sincere, neither devout nor enthusiastic ; 
you are each and all of you Philistine Rationalists, 



"Tancred" 273 

and as you do not dare to confess it, try your teeth 
on my book. 

Lord Tancred Montacute is brought up at the 
seat of a ducal family, sole heir of its wealth and 
honours, and tenderly cherished by affectionate and 
unworldly parents. He is a young man of the 
Young England type, earnest, conscientious, and 
romantically religious. The scene begins with his 
coming of age. His father wishes him to enter Par- 
liament, and enters into conversation with him on 
the subject, when he learns with amazement that 
his son is firmly resolved not to enter Parliament 
until it has become clear to him on what principles 
England is or ought to be governed, for he cannot 
discover that there is any principle in the organiza- 
tion of the State, either monarchical, aristocratic, or 
popular ; everything ancient is destroyed, and with 
the consent of those who ought to have been the 
guardians of it ; and he could not see whither the 
new order of things was. tending, nor on what prin- 
ciple it was based. He, therefore, did not mean to 
devote himself to politics ; he meant to travel. To 
Paris? No, not Paris. To Rome? No, nor yet 
Rome. Where then? He wished, after the ex- 
ample of his great forefathers, to make a pilgrimage 
to Jerusalem. The duke, who cannot bear the idea 
of sparing his son, even for a short time, and knows 
what grief this journey will cause his wife, is equally 
12* 



274 Lord Be aeons field. 

alarmed and surprised. He cannot imagine what 
Tancred wants to go to Jerusalem for. But Lord 
Montacute coolly tells him that he is convinced 
that the only land in which the Creator has deigned 
to reveal Himself to man — the land in which He as- 
sumed a manly form, and met a human death, must 
be a country endowed with marvellous and peculiar 
qualities. It was these qualities that drew Europe 
to Asia many times during the Middle Ages. Their 
castle had before this sent a De Montacute to Pal- 
estine. He, too, would kneel at the Holy Sepul- 
chre, would lift up his voice to heaven, and ask, 
What is duty, and what is faith ? What ought I to 
do, and what ought I to believe ? 

The parents, in their alarm, persuade their friend 
the bishop to try to bring the young lord to reason ; 
but he is an insignificant, ambitious man, whose sole 
desire is to make a career for himself, and he cannot 
find any answers to Tancred's doubts and argu- 
ments. Tancred says that society was once regu- 
lated by God, and is now regulated by man. He 
prefers divine to self government, and wishes to 
know how it is to be attained. The bishop replies 
that the Church now represents God upon earth ; 
but the young man objects that the Church no 
longer governs man. The bishop speaks of the 
progress of the Church in our days: "We shall soon 
see a bishop at Manchester." "But I want to see 



"Tancred." 275 

an angel at Manchester," answers Tancred. "An 
angel?" "Why not? Why should there not be 
heavenly messengers, when heavenly messages are 
most wanted ? " " We have received a heavenly 
message by one greater than the angels," answers 
the bishop. " Their visits to man ceased with the 
mightier advent." " Then why did angels appear to 
Mary and her companions at the holy tomb ? " in- 
quired Tancred.* The bishop leaves him without 
having effected his object, and with a diminished 
opinion of the young lord's intelligence. 

They succeeded in delaying Tancred's departure 
for a time. A thousand preparations have to be 
made ; a yacht must be bought, choice is difficult, 
and the vendors are not to be trusted. Various cir- 
cumstances intervene : the introduction of the young 
lord to London society, and an innocent love affair 
with a woman of the world, who affects the great- 
est interest in the Jerusalem scheme, but is in reality 
chiefly engrossed in speculations in shares, and she 
startles Tancred with the exclamation : " If we only 
had a railway to Jerusalem ! " A railway to Jeru- 
salem ! The very idea incensed Tancred. He would 
have been still more incensed had he known that the 
realization of the project would be advocated in the 
future by no less a person than Lord Beaconsfield. 

* "Tancred," p. 74. 



276 Lord Beaconsfield. 

In spite of every obstacle, Tancred adheres firmly 
to his plan, and at length gets off, provided with 
letters of introduction and letters of credit from Si- 
donia, the only person who understands why he 

wants to go to the Holy Land, and sympathizes in 

4 
his desire to penetrate the " Asian mystery." Ac- 
companied by a Jewish servant, procured, for him 
by Sidonia, who had accompanied him in his trav- 
els in the East, and provided with a regular^suite 
from the parental castle, Tancred arrives at Jeru- 
salem. 

The first adventure he meets with is a re?icontre 
with a young lady in a garden near Jerusalem, whose 
perfect Oriental beauty dazzles and captivates him, 
and her conversation appears to him so wise and 
true that she all at once convinces him that his 
youth had been passed in a series of delusions about 
the highest—things. It comes out that the young 
beauty, dressed in the Turkish style, and glittering 
with jewels, is a Jewess, called the Rose of Sharon ; 
her name is Eva, the daughter of the Crcesus of 
Syria, the noble and wealthy Besso, and grand- 
daughter of a powerful Bedoueen chief, the sheikh 
of sheikhs, Amalek. 

" ' You Franks love Bethany ? ' 

" ' Naturally ; a place to us most dear and inter- 
esting.' 

" ' Pray, are you of those Franks who worship a 



"Tancred" 277 

Jewess ; or of those others who revile her, break her 
images, and blaspheme her pictures? ' 

" ' I venerate, though I do not adore, the mother 
of God,' said Tancred, with emotion. 

"'Ah! the mother of Jesus!' said his com- 
panion. ' He is your God. He lived much in this 
village. He was a great man, but He was a Jew ; 
and you worship Him.' 

" ' And you do not worship Him ? ' said Tancred, 
looking up to her with an inquiring glance, and with 
a reddening cheek. 

" ' It sometimes seems to me that I ought,' said 
the lady, 'for I am of His race, and you should 
sympathize with your race.' 

" t You are, then, a Hebrew ? ' 

" ' I am of the same blood as Mary, whom you 
venerate, but do not adore.' " 

Eva has obtained a New Testament to read from 
the English bishop ; she does not find, however, 
that the Christianity in that agrees with what passes 
for it in actual life. Tancred suggests that she 
should seek the guidance of the Christian Church. 

" ' Which ? ' inquired the lady ; * there are so many 
in Jerusalem ; ' " and she names the English, the 
Latin, the Armenian, the Abyssinian, the Greek, the 
Maronite, and Coptic Churches. 

" * In this perplexity, it may be wise to remain 
within the pale of a Church older than all of them, 



278 Lord Beaconsjield. 

the Church in which Jesus was born, and which He 
never quitted, for He was born a Jew, lived a Jew, 
and died a Jew; as became a prince of the house of 
David, which you do and must acknowledge Him to 
have been.' " 

Eva suspects that Tancred thinks the present 
state of her race penal and miraculous? 

" Tancred bowed assent. i It is the punishment 
ordained for their rejection and crucifixion of the 
Messiah.' 

" ' Where is it ordained ? ' 

" ' Upon our heads and upon our children be His 
blood.' 

" ' The criminals said that, not the Judge. Is it a 
principle of your jurisprudence to permit the guilty 
to assign their own punishment ? They might de- 
serve a severer one. Why should they transfer any 
of the infliction to their posterity? What evidence 
have you that Omnipotence accepted the offer ? It 
is not so announced in your histories. Your evidence 
is the reverse. He whom you acknowledge as om- 
nipotent, prayed to Jehovah to forgive them on ac- 
count of their ignorance. But, admit that the offer 
was accepted, which in my opinion is blasphemy, is 
the cry of a rabble at a public execution to bind a 
nation?'"* 

* " Tancred," pp. 188-190. 



" Tancred." 279 

The theological, historical vindication of the Jew- 
ish nation, which the author puts into the heroine's 
mouth, is precisely, the same which, a few years 
afterwards, he tried to impress upon his readers in 
the " Life of Lord George Bentinck," and almost in 
the same words, only it is more circumstantial and 
expressed with more care. As Lord Beaconsfield's 
own face appears so plainly behind Eva's beautiful 
mask, it will be worth while to linger a little on the 
point. He says that the traditional doctrine, that 
the dispersion of the Jews was a punishment for the 
crucifixion of Christ, was neither historically true 
nor dogmatically sound — an assertion altogether 
superfluous for his and Eva's enlightened readers, 
but not needless in his own country, especially thirty 
years ago. 

Not historically true. For the Jews were at that 
time as much scattered in proportion over the then 
known world, as now over the whole civilized parts 
of the earth. Many Jews were living at that time, 
highly respected and well off, in Alexandria, as well 
as in Jerusalem. Less than two months after the 
Crucifixion, there came to Jerusalem, as we are ex- 
pressly told, " devout men, from every nation under 
heaven, Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and 
the dwellers in Mesopotamia," from Asia and Asia 
Minor, and even from Rome. What had all these 
to do with the Crucifixion ? Besides, as we know, 



280 Lord Beaconsjield, 

" the Jews were originally a nation of twelve tribes ; 
ten, long before the advent of Jesus, had been car- 
ried into captivity, and scattered over the East and 
the Mediterranean world ; they are probably the 
source of the greater portion of the existing He- 
brews." What had they to do with the death of 
Jesus ? Jerusalem has not been conquered oftener 
than Athens, or treated worse ; but its people, un- 
happily, fought too bravely and rebelled too often, 
so that at last they were expatriated. Expatriation 
is a purely Oriental custom. "We will suppose," 
says Eva, " all the Jews in all the cities of the 
world to be the lineal descendants of the mob who 
shouted at the Crucifixion. Yet another question ! 
My grandfather is a Bedoueen sheikh, chief of one 
of the most powerful tribes of the desert. My 
mother was his daughter. He is a Jew ; his whole 
tribe are Jews ; they read and obey the Five Books, 
live in tents, have thousands of camels, ride horses 
of the Nedjed breed, and care for nothing except 
Jehovah, Moses, and their mares. Were they at 
Jerusalem at the Crucifixion, and does the shout of 
the rabble touch them ? Yet my mother marries a 
Hebrew of the cities, and a man, too, fit to sit on 
the throne of King Solomon ; and a little Christian 
yahoo, with a round hat, who sells figs at Smyrna, 
will cross the street if he see her, lest he should be 
contaminated by the blood of one who crucified his 



"Tancred" 281 

Saviour ; his Saviour being, by his own statement, 
one of the princes of our royal house. No ; I will 
never become a Christian if I am to eat such 
sand ! " * 

The discourse is carried on with short questions 
and answers, from which it appears that the Ar- 
menians, who have not crucified a Redeemer, are 
still more completely expatriated than the Jews, and 
that the assumed curse cannot have been so very 
effective, since in Europe, where nothing is so much 
honoured and sought after as money, the wealthiest 
men in all countries are found among the Jews. 

The conversation has now reached the point 
where Disraeli brings forward, through Eva, his sec- 
ond objection to the retributive theory, that it is 
dogmatically unsound. For the sake of brevity, I 
give the statement as he is accustomed to formulate 
it himself : — It can by no means be said with truth 
that even the small section of the Jewish race living 
in those remote times in Palestine rejected Jesus. 
Were it not for the Jews of Palestine, the Northern 
and Western races would know nothing of the gos- 
pel now. The first Apostles were Jews, exclusively 
Jews ; the first evangelists were Jews, and Jews 
only. For more than a century none but Jews be- 
lieved in the teaching of* Jesus. It was not a Ro- 

* " Tancred," p. 191. 



282 Lord Beaconsfield. 

man senator, nor an Athenian philosopher, but a 
Jew of Tarsus, who founded the Seven Churches of 
Asia; and that more famous Church, which avenged 
the conquest of Jerusalem by conquering Rome, 
and turning all the Grecian and Roman temples 
into altars to the God of Sinai and Calvary, was 
founded by a Galilean Jew. There was no differ- 
ence between the morality of the new doctrine and 
that of the old. 

"They, who, in those somewhat lax effusions, 
which in these days are honoured with the holy 
name of theology, speak of the morality of the gos- 
pel as a thing apart and of novel revelation, would 
do well to remember that in promulgating such doc- 
trines they are treading on very perilous ground. 
There cannot be two moralities ; and to hold that 
the Second Person of the Holy Trinity could teach a 
different morality from that which had been already 
revealed by the First Person of the Holy Trinity, 
is a dogma so full of terror that it may perhaps 
be looked upon as the ineffable sin against the Holy 
Spirit. When the lawyer tempted our Lord, and 
inquired how he was to inherit eternal life, the great 
Master of Galilee referred him to the writings of 
Moses. There he would find recorded the whole 
duty of man." * 

* " Life of Lord George Bentinck," p. 48. 



"Tattered." 283 

If, then, the essence of Christianity does not con- 
sist in a new system of morals, it can only consist 
in the fore-ordained sacrificial and atoning death of 
Christ. Eva attacks Tancred on this point : — " Sup- 
pose the Jews had not prevailed upon the Romans 
to crucify Jesus, what would have become of the 
atonement? Where was the inexpiable crime of 
those who fulfilled the beneficent intention ? The 
holy race supplied the victim and the immolators. 
'. . . And with such a doctrine, . . . with divine 
persons for the agents, and the redemption of the 
whole family of man for the subject ; you can mix 
up the miserable persecution Of a single race ! . . . 
Persecute us ! Why, if you believed what you pro- 
fess, you should kneel to us ! You raise statues to 
the hero who saves a country. We have saved the 
human race, and you persecute us for doing it." * 

In thus presenting the substance of these ideas 
to the reader, the artistic form is marred, and this 
important dialogue may appear hyper-theological, 
but in connection with the context it is not at all 
inartistic ; it is in harmony with the surroundings 
of the speakers, and is well adapted to produce an 
impression on the young man, who is interested in 
theology. As far as the relation of the author to 
its contents is concerned, it seems to me that Dis- 

*" Tancred," p. 195. 



284 Lord Beaconsfield. 

raeli has remained true to his watchword in " Vivian 
Grey." In order to oppose some of the orthodox 
formulas which stand in his way, he admits the rest 
without hesitation ; and when he makes Eva speak 
of these things, the discussion of them is fre^h, 
sincere, and without false pathos or unction, while, 
when he is speaking in his own name (as in the 
" Life of Bentinck "), he feels compelled to have 
regard to his position as Tory leader, and he speaks 
with tears in his eyes, and in a sanctimonious tone. 
Those who have a lively recollection of the en- 
lightened views of the leading statesmen of the 
eighteenth century, and of their liberal way of 
treating of the scholastic problems here treated of 
in so narrow a spirit, cannot fail to regret the 
retrograde step ; but, when it is considered that 
Disraeli was speaking to England before the year 
1848, and that his Liberal opponent, Gladstone, 
still in his most liberal phase (" Juventus Mundi," 
1869) showed an entirely different bias on theologi- 
cal topics, and seriously thought he had found the 
Christian Trinity among the Homeric gods, even 
in Poseidon's trident, we see Disraeli's doctrines of 
atonement and predestination in another light, and 
perceive that, within the prescribed limits, for a Tory, 
he is almost an advocate of religious Radicalism. 

Poor Tancred is pursued by a certain irony. His 
theological discussion with Eva leads to his being 



"Tancred." 285 

at least as much in love as he is convinced. His 
journey from Jerusalem to Sinai results in his being 
attacked by the Bedoueen horde of her grandfather, 
who takes him for the brother of the Queen of 
England, and demands an enormous ransom. After 
a brave resistance, he is overpowered and taken 
prisoner. In the camp he makes acquaintance with 
Arab life and ways of thinking, sheikhs and emirs, 
wins the heart of the young ernir Fakredeen, and 
soon obtains his liberty. He has now imbibed the 
impression of the superiority of the Arab race ; he 
has repeatedly heard the Bedoueen chief say: 
" Men may doubt the existence of unicorns ; of one 
thing there can be no doubt — that God never spoke 
to a man who was not an Arab." He is already ac- 
customed pathetically to call himself of the religion, 
though not of the race, of the Arabs ; he recalls with 
shame and regret that he has been brought up from 
childhood to consider it the noblest pedigree to be 
descended from a band of Baltic pirates, who never 
received a revelation ; now he is ripe for the pil- 
grimage to Sinai. At the cypress, half-way up the 
mount, which, tradition says, is the scene of the 
revelation ; the solitary Tancred falls on his knees, 
and prays at midnight to Jehovah. He seems to 
see a mighty luminous form ; he calls himself the 
Angel of Arabia, and speaks consoling and stirring 
words to him. 



286 Lord Be aeons fie Id. 

This angelic revelation reminds the reader of a 
similar one in the fantastic " Alroy," and, though 
treated as purely subjective, it is quite a failure. The 
angel's long palaver is nothing but a concise resume' 
of all that the chief personages in " Tancred" are in 
the habit of saying, and all pretence to style is at an 
end when such phrases as " the social problem " pass 
his lips. The Angel of Arabia belongs to that class 
of sovereigns who have learnt nothing and forgot- 
ten nothing, for he proclaims a pure theocracy, the 
equality of men under the government of God. But 
this geographical angel is at the same time a very 
Disraeli-ish potentate, for he concludes by exhorting 
Tancred to adopt the watchword of his originator : 
" Fear not, faint not, falter not. Obey the impulse 
of thine own spirit, and find a ready instrument in 
every human being." 

Unfortunately, the reader is not told to what ex- 
tent the angel's promises are fulfilled, for the novel 
ends when the lovely Eva gi»es'her hand to Tan- 
cred, and England and the East enter into a sym- 
bolic union in their persons, like that between aris- 
tocracy and trade by the marriage of Coningsby and 
Edith Millbank, or the Tories and the people by 
the marriage of Charles Egremont and Sybil Gerard, 
in the author's earlier works. 

The strong point of the book is the masterly way 
in which Eastern life in the present day is sketched, 



"Tattered." 287 

especially where the introduction of European ideas 
and usages is illustrated. The dialogues of the 
natives are in harmony with the scenery of the 
desert, and the solitary castles beneath the Syrian 
hills. With the intuition of mental affinity, Disraeli 
has divined the Oriental way of looking at things, 
and imitates the mode of expression to a nicety. 
Two of Tancred's English servants play the part of 
fool, in English and Spanish plays, amidst these 
curious surroundings, and relieve the pathos of the 
book by introducing a comic element. Technically 
speaking, Disraeli has scarcely written anything 
better than the contrasts produced by the naive 
English arrogance and homely wants of these ser- 
vants. We hear them complaining, when in impris- 
onment in the Bedoueen camp, that the "savages" 
have drunk up all the blacking for cleaning my 
lord's boots, and find that their wants, during the 
painful absence from their own country, culminate 
in a sigh for a little sugar for their coffee. 

Among the Orientals, the emir Fakredeen is dis- 
tinguished for his brilliant and paradoxical qualities. 
This character is the most original Lord Beacons- 
field has ever drawn. Fakredeen is a political 
genius, wanting in knowledge and firmness of pur- 
pose, but he has picked up a few crumbs of Euro- 
pean culture ; he served the author's purpose in 
1847, m enabling him to sketch, in caricature, some 



288 Lord Beaconsfield. 

of the schemes which were running in his head. 
Fakredeen, who in his earlier years only aimed at a 
sort of Syrian sovereignty, now longs for a- larger 
sphere of political action. He wants to astonish 
Europe instead of the Lebanon, and to checkmate 
the thrones and powers of the great world instead 
of the sheikhs and emirs of his own mountains. He 
sits through the long Eastern days, with his Turkish 
pipe in his mouth, on Tancred's divan, and pours 
the wildest political fantasies into his friend's ear. 

Among his fugitive projects, there is one as fol- 
lows : — " You (Englishmen) must perform the Por- 
tuguese scheme on a great scale ; quit a petty and 
exhausted position for a vast and prolific empire. 
Let the Queen of England collect a great fleet, let 
her stow away all her treasure, bullion, gold plate, 
and precious arms ; be accompanied by all her court 
and chief people, and transfer the seat of her empire 
from London to Delhi. There she will find an 
immense empire ready made, a first-rate army, and 
a large revenue. ... I will take care of Syria and 
Asia Minor. The only way to manage the Afghans 
is by Persia and by the Arabs. We will acknow- 
ledge the Empress of India as our suzerain, and 
secure for her the Levantine coast. If she like, she 
shall have Alexandria, as she now has Malta; it 
could be arranged. Your Queen is young ; she has 
an avenir. Aberdeen and Sir Peel will never give 



"Tattered" 289 

her this advice ; their habits are formed. They are 
too old, too ruse's. But, you see ! the greatest em- 
pire that ever existed ; besides which, she gets rid 
of the embarrassment of her Chambers ! And quite 
practicable ; for the only difficult part, the conquest 
of India, which baffled Alexander, is all done ! " * 

It is impossible to read this passage without per- 
ceiving that every sentiment in it agrees with some 
utterance or action of Lord Beaconsfield's. He has 
since defined England as an Asiatic power. He 
has not, it is true, removed the seat of government 
to India, but he has emphatically said that the 
centre of gravity of British power lies in this col- 
ony. He has not asked the Queen to go there, but 
he has made her Empress of India, and sent the 
Prince of Wales there, well furnished with " trea- 
sure, bullion, and precious arms," and "accom- 
panied by his chief people." He has summoned 
Indian troops to Europe to support England. He 
has, in literal accordance with Fakredeen's plans, 
made Asia Minor acknowledge the sway of the 
Empress of India. His object in buying the Suez 
Canal shares was to secure the way to India, and 
if he has not acquired possession of Alexandria, 
, which was, however, once projected, and only given 
up in order not to offend France, he has taken Cy- 

* " Tancred," p. 263. 
13 



290 Lord Beaconsfield. 

prus instead. While these lines are being written, 
he is engaged in subjugating the Afghans, and — 
to include the last clause in this long passage — he 
has shown a strong inclination to make short work 
with both Chambers when he wanted, by decisive 
action, to steal a march on a powerful adversary, 
who was under no obligation to announce his 
schemes to any popular assembly. 

" Tancred," in its relation to the Eastern politics 
of Lord Beaconsfield, is a veritable palimpsest ; 
beneath a layer of poetical and grotesque fantasies, 
the book concealed for thirty years the serious pro- 
gramme of this policy, and not until Time, the 
greatest of critics, has by degrees, during the last 
four years, corroded the surface, were other critics 
enabled to decipher the concealed and instructive 
original writing. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

DISRAELI AS TORY LEADER. 

WITH "Tancred," Disraeli's work as a novelist 
ceased for full twenty-three years. The only book 
which he published during this long period, the 
" Life of Lord George Bentinck" (1851), is of a 
political character, an account of the early Parlia- 
mentary contests in which the author was engaged ; 
and the rest of the contents, the exhaustive memo- 
rial relating to the emancipation of the Jews, is but 
a variation of the ideas in "Tancred." But, al- 
though Lord Beaconsfield's literary activity ceased 
in 1847 ^ certainly did not arise from any feeling 
of exhaustion on his part. He is not one of those 
men whose energies flag early. It was only be- 
cause, from the period when he became Tory 
leader, he no longer had time for literary produc- 
tion. From his earliest years he had, like Contarini 
Fleming's father, placed action above authorship. 
He had long been firmly resolved, as he wrote of 
his ideal, Lord Bolingbroke, " to sacrifice himself 
absolutely to his party, and to spend in its service 
all the energy of his Proteus-like mind." He, there- 

291 



292 Lord Beaconsfield. 

fore, made no attempt to serve two masters. He 
allowed his literary abilities to enter exclusively 
into the service of politics. 

The sudden death of Bentinck, in 1848, left Dis- 
raeli the sole leader of the Protectionists ; the 
equally sudden death of Sir Robert Peel, by a fall 
from his horse, left him the most distinguished man 
of the two sections of Conservatives. The leader 
of the Tories in the Lords, Lord Stanley, after- 
wards Earl of Derby, recognized him as a political 
ally of equal rank. It was not long before the 
noble lord, like Lord George Bentinck previously, 
even drew his political inspiration from Disraeli, 
and while he contented himself with being nominal 
head of the party, he smoothed the last bit of the 
parvenu s stony path to power. 

Still, there was a long way yet to actual power ; 
the party which followed the Tory leader was in 
a decided minority. The banner which he had 
inherited, the white banner of the duty on corn, 
was so unpopular that it seemed most prudent to 
furl it up and put it in his pocket ; the future of- 
fered him no other part to play than that of watch- 
ful, but for the present powerless, critic of Lord 
John Russell's Whig administration, and that of 
encouraging leader of a totally routed and embit- 
tered party, whose impatience he had to control, 
but whose illusions as to the possibility of a finan- 



Disraeli as Tory Leader, 293 

cial political change, having the keen eye of a 
statesman, he did not for a moment share. 

Almost from the day on which the Corn Laws 
were abolished, Disraeli openly gave out that it was 
useless to think of reopening the question, or of 
reintroducing the abolished laws ; the voice of the 
country had decidedly declared against protection, 
and no statesman could disregard so powerful an 
opinion,, however strongly he might- be convinced 
that it had been produced by artificial, or even 
unjustifiable, means. All the speeches, therefore, 
which he made in favour of the landed interest, from 
1848 to 1852, drop the old watchword, " Protection 
against Free Trade," entirely, and turn exclusively 
to other means of healing the wounds which, by the 
Whigs' confession, the sudden abolition of the corn 
duties had inflicted on the landowners and farmers. 
As a great actor can shine in a small and thankless 
part, and cause its insignificance to be forgotten 
by the masterly way in which he plays it, Lord 
Beaconsfield shines at this period by the care and 
sagacity with which he brings forward every ac- 
knowledgment that a wrong has been done to the 
agriculturists, which ought to be made good ; and 
no less so by the clearness and force with which he 
suggests how the difficult position of the British 
farmer may be mitigated without recurring to the 
settled question of duties. He showed that the 



294 Lord Beacons field. 

sum of ten millions annually demanded for " local 
purposes," fell almost exclusively on the landed 
property, although these purposes concerned the 
whole country, and not the land only. It was un- 
reasonable to consider such burdens as the care of 
the poor, the maintenance of roads and bridges, and 
police expenses, as local, instead of national, and to 
throw them on the land. The unreasonableness of 
the present system was so great, that lately, a Lon- 
don Quaker, who had committed a murder in Buck- 
inghamshire, was prosecuted at the expense of the 
county; they might just as well demand — indeed, 
better, that the Liverpool merchants should bear 
the expense of England's interference in La Plata, 
for it was solely for their benefit. He adroitly 
quoted Cobden's remark, that no tax on raw mate- 
rial should be tolerated, and defined the soil as the 
raw material of the necessaries of life ; and Cobden 
sanctioned the definition. 

" Do not," cried he, one day in Parliament, 
" under this system, oppress the land of England 
with the pharisaical pretence that you are the advo- 
cates of a great politico-economical scheme that will 
not tolerate the taxation of a raw material, and sup- 
pose at the same time that we will endure that the 
whole social existence of England shall be founded 
on a system which, morning, noon, and night, in 
every duty of the life of an Englishman, taxes the 



Disraeli as Tory Leader. 295 

most important raw material of a nation's indus- 
try." * 

His efforts were of no avail ; his motion was re- 
jected. He then proposed to abolish the duty on 
malt, as oppressive to the farmers. He appealed to 
the fact that, two years before, no less a man than 
Richard Cobden had promised the abolition of this 
tax, with the acknowledgment : " We owe some- 
thing to the farmers, and will try to pay our debts." 
But in vain ; the Commons decided, by an over- 
whelming majority, to retain the Malt Tax. He 
showed that the celebrated Free Trader, McCul- 
loch, in his treatise on taxation, had stated that the 
English farmers, in order to be placed on an equal 
footing with foreign producers, were entitled to a 
protective duty of six to seven shillings per quarter, 
and said that the abolition of the Corn Laws had 
been carried by false statements and misrepresenta- 
tions of every kind.f But it was all in vain ; the 
victorious Free Traders turned a deaf ear to him ; 
the old statements and promises had long been for- 
gotten, and nobody quite believed in the grievances 
of the landowners and farmers; they had foretold 



* Hitchman's " Public Life of the Earl of Beaconsfield," vol. i. p. 

3<H. 

f McCulloch. "A Treatise on the Principles and Practical Influ- 
ence of Taxation and the Funding System." Second Edition, pp. 
195-202. 



296 Lord Beaconsfield. 

that all sorts of disasters would follow the abolition 
of the Corn Laws ; they had not followed, and the 
exchequer revealed that the country was in an un- 
usually flourishing state. The landed interest was 
like the shepherd boy in the fable : it had so often 
cried for help against the free trade wolf, that it was 
not believed when danger really threatened. There 
was, therefore, nothing left for Disraeli but to warn 
the Free Traders in general against arrogance and 
exaggeration, and to threaten them with the Neme- 
sis. They had said that it did not signify whether 
there was an acre of cultivated land ; England 
should monopolize the trade of the world, and be 
the workshop of the world. He pointed to the fate 
of Venice and Tyre, which abundantly showed what 
became of great mercantile powers, if they were 
destitute of the stability and firmness of the terri- 
torial principle. Perhaps the parallel seemed a 
little far-fetched to the cool-headed Free Traders. 

With more skill, if not with greater success, Dis- 
raeli was, during this period, the inexorable critic 
of the foreign policy of the Liberal administration. 
It was that policy which has become notorious un- 
der the name of the "meddle and muddle policy." 
After the disastrous commotions of 1848, England 
interfered in all countries, under the auspices of 
Lord John Russell, as the friend of the oppressed, 
as the ally of the Liberals, as adviser and monitor 



Disraeli as Tory Leader. 297 

of reactionary Governments, and when her incon- 
venient counsels were rejected, she left her proteges 
in the lurch. The English Ministers appeared to x 
act on the assumption, without any special study of 
local circumstances, that it must be the salvation of 
every country to have an Upper House, a Lower 
House, and a commercial treaty after the Englis 
model. They gave their advice accordingly, and i 
it was not followed, the cause of the malcontents 
in the various countries was dropped. There was 
something appropriate, when viewed in a purely 
aesthetic light, in the unqualified expression by the 
Whig Ministers of their sympathy with European 
Liberalism. Nothing could exceed English pride 
and the jaunty complaisance of Lord Palmerston, 
when, as Minister for Foreign Affairs, after Kos- 
suth's flattering reception in England, he graciously 
received addresses, thanking him for what he had 
done for the famous exile, in which the Emperors 
of Russia and Austria were called " detestable and 
odious assassins, relentless tyrants and despots." 
He declared himself highly flattered and exceed- 
ingly pleased with the addresses, only taking care 
to guard his position with respect to the friendly 
powers, Russia and Austria, by the not very large 
reservation that he must not be supposed to agree 
with every expression made use of. 

This sort of thing certainly looks bolder, more 
13* 



298 Lord Beaconsjield. 

amiable, as well as more liberal, than Disraeli's de- 
nunciations, almost at the same time, of the league 
between the British Ministry, and the un-English 
Continental Jacobinism, which was even intending 
to supersede the legitimate sovereigns of Italy ; but 
when we look at the results of this noisy but fee- 
ble Ministerial policy, we can but justify Disraeli's 
polemics against their perpetual interference. In 
1848 the Spanish Government had replied to an in- 
judicious admonitory letter of Lord Palmerston's 
by dismissing the English Ambassador from Ma- 
drid, and breaking off diplomatic relations. In the 
following year, the English Minister sent six confi- 
dential agents to no purpose, one after the other, to 
La Plata, a second-rate rebellious Spanish colony, 
and it followed the example of the mother country, 
and gave the British Minister his passport. Inter- 
ference in the affairs of the King of the two Sicilies 
had no better result. The first evidences of the 
disesteem into which England, as a Great Power, 
was to fall through her feeble foreign policy in the 
course of the next thirty. years of an almost unbro- 
ken Whig Ministry were beginning to show them- 
selves. Ministers were even then obliged to tell the 
Opposition that England must not overrate her in- 
fluence. Disraeli did not leave this unanswered. 
The conclusion of a speech in Parliament about this 
time sounds like a prophecy of the totally different 



Disraeli as Tory Leader. 299 

spirit in which he would conduct the foreign policy 
of the country. 

"At all events," he said, " he would rather that 
his tongue were paralyzed than advise the English 
people to lower its tone. Yes, he would rather leave 
that House for ever than tell the English people 
that it overrated its position. He left these delicate 
intimations to the glowing patriotism of the gentle- 
men of the new school. For his part, he deplored 
their policy, and defied their prophecies, but he did 
this because he had faith in the people of England, 
in their genius, and in their destiny." 

The measure of the Russell administration was 
filled up ; it had long been weakened by the in- 
trigues of the Prime Minister against Lord Palmer- 
ston, which drove him from the Foreign Office ; an 
abortive Reform Bill, and a no less abortive Militia 
Bill, gave the final blow. The discontented Whigs, 
the Peelites under the leadership of Palmerston, 
and the Tories under that of Disraeli, brought 
about the fall of the Ministry in 1852. The Queen 
charged Lord Derby with the formation of a new 
administration, and after the office of Chancellor of 
the Exchequer had been declined by Lord Palmer- 
ston, it was accepted by Benjamin Disraeli, and in 
his suite, so to speak, and as representative of the 
almost forgotten' "Young England," his pupil, Lord 
John Manners, took office as " First Commissioner 



300 Lord Beaconsfield. 

of Works and Public Buildings," and he has held 
office in all Disraeli's subsequent Ministries. Thus 
Disraeli became for the first time a member of the 
Government ; the once isolated Parliamentary gladi- 
ator had become an English Minister, 






CHAPTER XIX. 

FIRST MINISTERIAL OFFICE. 

Disraeli did not find himself, however, on a bed 
of roses. The Tory party was in the minority in 
the Lower House, and was not strong in the Upper. 
In the Commons, the numbers of the Tories and the 
Whigs and Radicals allied were about equal, so that 
it was the party of Peel's old adherents that turned 
the scale, and it will be readily believed that Dis- 
raeli had no fiercer opponents. The administra- 
tion was no sooner formed than the revival of the 
Anti-Corn Law League throughout the country 
was planned, and there was a vehement agitation 
against the dreaded protective reaction. I have 
already mentioned that the new Chancellor of the 
Exchequer was far from having any design of con- 
ducting such a reaction ; but his followers undoubt- 
edly hoped for it, and, unfortunately, there was so 
much disagreement on the point in the Cabinet, 
that while Disraeli, in a programme addressed to 
his constituents, prudently avoided the word " Pro- 
tection," and only spoke in general terms of " cura- 
tive measures," to which the producers were enti- 

3°i 



302 Lord Beacons field. 

tied, Lord Derby, in his first speech in the House 
of Lords, imprudently adopted so challenging an 
attitude, that in consequence of it, £27,000 were 
subscribed for the league at a meeting at Manches- 
ter in the course of ten minutes. Seldom has a 
witty remark been so completely confirmed as was, 
on this occasion, Disraeli's designation of Lord 
Derby two years before, as the Prince Rupert of 
Parliamentary debate ; his attack was always irre- 
sistible, but on his return from pursuit he constantly 
found his camp in the hands of the enemy. The 
new Chancellor needed much dexterity not to make 
a false step on the very threshold. 

The office of Finance Minister, which had been 
allotted to Disraeli, could scarcely have been his 
own choice ; it has been said that it was given him 
because, at that time, probably through the influ- 
ence of Prince Albert, the Queen was very unfa- 
vourable to him, and in this office he would not 
come into personal contact with her. However that 
may be, he has since discovered, better than any 
one else, how to gain the Queen's favour, and in 
1852 he performed the task confided to him with 
such remarkable ability, that even his opponents 
could not refuse recognition of it. His first budget, 
which necessarily did not differ essentially from that 
of his predecessors, was received with applause. In 
a letter from Lord Palmerston to his brother, of 



First Ministerial Office. 303 

30th of April, 1852, he says: "Disraeli has this 
evening made a very good financial estimate. His 
speech of two hours was excellent, well arranged, 
clear, and well sustained. . . . He has entirely 
thrown overboard the idea of an import duty on 
corn, in other words, the principle of protection." 
In fact, Disraeli had said, on the very first day of 
his taking office, in answer to a query on the burn- 
ing question of the corn duties, that as the Free 
Traders had succeeded in exciting so much preju- 
dice and hatred, even against the purely fiscal meas- 
ure of a low-fixed duty, he should consider it to be 
the most senseless and useless undertaking for a 
Government to bid defiance to this popular opinion, 
and in his speech on the budget, he expressed him- 
self to the same effect. This attitude seems to have 
irritated his chief, Lord Derby, more than any one. 
Only a week later, in order to do away with the 
impression of what the Chancellor had said, Lord 
Derby, with his accustomed impetuosity, dropped 
hints in an after-dinner speech about the necessity 
of compromises between 'the corn-producing and 
the corn-consuming class. The consequence was 
that in the next sitting of the Commons after this 
speech, the Government found itself in a minority 
of no less than eighty-six. The unfortunate Tory 
Ministry, then, only lived by favour of its opponents, 
and prudence on the Free Trade question was more 



304 Lord Beaconsfield. 

necessary than ever. Disraeli again rose, with the 
assurance that he considered the Corn Laws dead 
and buried. He even spoke with a certain disdain 
of protection as "an exploded system." "The 
spirit of the age," he said, " tends to free inter- 
course, and no statesman can disregard with impu- 
nity the genius of the epoch in which he lives." He 
had never so decidedly cast off the Protectionists. 
He proposed, in order to relieve the landed interest, 
a revision of the system of taxation, as he had sug- 
gested when leader of the Opposition. But the dif- 
ficulties which a Tory administration had to sur- 
mount under these circumstances were too great. 
The dissolution of Parliament did not give the Cab- 
inet a majority, scarcely a more favourable position. 
In a brilliant speech of over five hours, the Chancel- 
lor of the Exchequer brought forward his second 
budget — a well-devised, bold budget, reforming on 
a large scale ; the principle of it was to relieve, by 
reorganization of taxation, the classes which had 
suffered from the legislative changes of the last few 
years ; but the most interesting feature in it to my 
mind is, that Disraeli proposed a large diminution 
of the tax on tea, by carrying out which Gladstone 
gained so much credit several years later. But the 
budget was assailed with vehement criticism from 
all sides. The Protectionists gave vent to their dis- 
appointment at Disraeli's adoption of the principle 



First Ministerial Office. 305 

of Free Trade, the Peelites gave abundant expres- 
sion to their personal dislike to the foe and succes- 
sor of Peel, Whigs and Tories demonstrated that all 
the proposed changes in taxation were bad, and 
when the division took place, a majority of nineteen 
against the budget put an end both to it and the 
Derby Ministry. The Tory Government had only 
lasted ten months, from February to December, 
1852. 

Among the Peelite opponents of the budget, one 
personage played a foremost part, whose shadow 
was thenceforth to be cast on Disraeli's life, and 
whose name, as his successful rival for twenty years, 
has always been coupled with his — William Ewart 
Gladstone. He was the foe marked out for him by 
fate for the rest of his life. If it really was the case, 
as the keys to " Coningsby " assert, that the author 
had Gladstone in his mind when portraying the 
manufacturer's son, Oswald Millbank, who was so 
enchanted with the young Tory aristocrats, Glad- 
stone, whom Macaulay called, not many years later, 
" the rising hope of the rigid and inflexible Tories," 
has confounded both his and Disraeli's prognosti- 
cations. He has ended with being the hope of the 
directly opposite party. While Disraeli's career has 
brought him from an almost Radical starting-point 
to the leadership of the Tories, Gladstone, on the 
other hand, has gradually passed from extreme 



306 Lord Beaconsfield, 

Toryism to an almost Radical policy. And while 
the careers of the two opponents form a sym- 
metrical contrast, their talents and characters are 
so decidedly opposed, that this seems the place, 
where they are first confronted with each , other, 
to allow the character and talents of Gladstone to 
throw light on the peculiarities of Lord Beacons- 
field. 

There is that abstract likeness between the rivals 
which serves to make the contrast the more marked. 
Both are practical politicians and distinguished Par- 
liamentary speakers ; both have made a name as au- 
thors outside the sphere of politics. They belong 
to the same generation (Gladstone was born in 
1809), and were, in their youth, not only contempo- 
rary with the period of the great political and re- 
ligious reaction, but experienced it themselves, and, 
as the result, both statesmen have a bit of the theo- 
logian in them. Gladstone became a Puseyite when 
Disraeli was a ritualistic enthusiast ; and, as specu- 
lative theologians, they are equally unscientific : 
Gladstone has his peculiar theory about the Trinity 
and Homer, and Disraeli has his own private doc- 
trine of preordination about the Crucifixion and 
the Jewish race. But even within these narrow 
limits, the likeness does not extend further; for 
Disraeli's theological narrowness always seems more 
than half-intentional, while Gladstone's is naive. 



First Ministerial Office. 307 

Gladstone is, above all things, a man of conviction, 
but this does not preclude changes in his convic- 
tions ; bit by bit he has entirely changed his politi- 
cal creed, but he has had at each moment a firm 
belief in the truth of the creed that he professed. 
Lord Beaconsfield, on the other hand, has plumed 
himself on his political unchangeableness, and has, 
on all essential points, been consistent with himself ; 
if, in spite of this, he has taken very various stand- 
points, the modifications which may be pointed out 
in his political attitude' do not seem to have been 
v determined by altered convictions, but by an intel- 
ligible regard for circumstances. Gladstone is a 
character, a man capable of development and al- 
ways developing, and of extraordinary gifts, espe- 
cially of great practical understanding ; he has the 
head of a financial minister, and the heart of a phi- 
lanthropist ; he is a man of figures, with sympathy 
for the sufferings of humanity ; but he is uninterest- 
ing and wanting in originality. The character of 
Lord Beaconsfield, on the contrary, is absolutely 
original ; there is something daemonic in him. His 
mind is of the metallic order, while Gladstone's is 
of the fluid sort. Disraeli became what he is all at 
once, and could scarcely change ; he broke himself 
in, learnt self-control, acquired great knowledge of 
human nature, and a flexibility and dexterity which 
sometimes remind you of a lawyer, but in any 



308 Lord Beaconsjield. 

deeper and more special sense he has not developed 
at all; he has only rubbed off his angles on the 
world around him. While it does not cost Glad- 
stone much to confess that he has been mistaken, 
Disraeli never allows himself to have been in the 
wrong, and with a certain justification, for his char- 
acter appears to him as a whole, over which time 
has no power ; he is the man who cannot err, as he 
is the man who does not change. This is the point 
where the real and the theatrical in his character 
meet ; he does not confess any political error, any 
more than he confesses to a single grey hair. But if 
you take the word development in the less precise 
sense of self-culture and self-control, Disraeli is far 
more capable of development than Gladstone. 
While Gladstone, up to old age, indeed in an in- 
creasing degree as he has advanced in years, has 
given way to vehemence and temper, has been sen- 
sitive and impatient, his rival has been constantly 
growing quieter and cooler. In his youthful works 
the superlative reigned supreme, and in " Contarini 
Fleming," for example, the hot stage of fever only 
gave way to the cold ; but he has grown into the 
party leader who never loses his composure, who 
knows better than any one how to keep silence — 
prefers, indeed, to keep silence ; he is imperturbable, 
impenetrable ; he is the Parliamentary sphinx, the 
personification of patient waiting. Gladstone flung 



First Ministerial Office. 309 

away the leadership of his party in a moment 
of irritation, and, after the fall of his Ministry, 
withdrew angrily into his tent. Lord Beacons- 
field, after every defeat, has only been cooler than 
ever. 

The two rivals betray the profound difference in 
their natures as speakers. Gladstone appeals, in 
order to produce conviction, to the eternal ideas of 
truth and justice ; he speaks in the name of Chris- 
tianity and humanity ; he recognizes philosophic, 
philanthropic, and cosmopolitan ideas as the high- 
est, even in the sphere of politics. For Lord Bea- 
consfield, on the contrary, the great statesmen of' 
England are the decisive authorities ; he does not 
appeal to ideas, but to precedents, not to principles, 
but to Bolingbroke or Shelburne ; he does not 
quote Shakespeare, but Hansard ; he desires, above 
all things, to be national and historical. And as the 
contents of his speeches differ from those of Glad- 
stone, so does the form. Gladstone is a* clear and 
energetic, but far too discursive speaker ; not a single 
word, not a telling phrase, stands out in the torrent 
of his eloquence, so as once heard, never to be 
forgotten. He has himself defined the relations be- 
tween the speaker and his hearers ; he says that the 
speaker gives them back in the form of a river what 
he receives from them as vapour. He himself is 
the speaker thus defined, and it is on the close rela- 



310 Lord Beaconsfield. 

tion to his hearers here indicated that the great 
effect of his words depends ; they seldom read well. 
Lord Beaconsfield's speeches, on the contrary, are 
eminently monologues, the products of an original, 
paradoxical, and therefore isolated mind, the work 
of a born author, brilliant and sparkling, excellent 
in parts, but long passages in them are trivial, a 
mere tissue of spangles. 

Still, it is not as members of Parliament, but 
as leaders of foreign policy, that these two great 
statesmen are most strikingly contrasted. It was 
Gladstone's highest ambition, systematically to di- 
minish the National Debt by extraordinary financial 
measures ; he succeeded in doing so, and in order 
not to disturb this result, when controller of Eng- 
land's destinies, he sank into an unexampled state 
of blissful tranquillity and indifference about foreign 
policy, and carried the principle of non-intervention 
so far that he lowered the dignity of England in 
every quarter of the world, nay, made her almost an 
object of ridicule. The chief strength of his oppo- 
nent, who is by no means his equal as a financier, 
consists in his advocating precisely opposite ten- 
dencies in foreign policy, and in his having made 
amends for Gladstone's failures in this respect. 
The man whom Gladstone not long ago called " a 
foreigner, with not a drop of English blood in his 
veins," has kept the colonies, whose continued con- 



First Ministerial Office. 311 

nection with the mother country Gladstone treated 
as a matter of indifference, as closely as possible 
under English rule, and, by an energetic policy in 
face of England's foes, he has restored the lost pres- 
tige to his country's name. 



CHAPTER XX. 

DISRAELI AS LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION, AND 
HIS SECOND MINISTERIAL OFFICE. 

The fall of the Derby Administration in Decem- 
ber, 1852, again placed Disraeli in the Opposition 
camp. For the sake of convenience, I give the par- 
ticulars of his political position from that time to 
the present. Out of the twenty-one following 
years, he was scarcely four at the helm. He was 
only twice in the Ministry during this time ; he was 
Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lord Derby 
from March, 1858, to June, 1859, an< ^ ne entered 
the Derby Ministry in the same capacity in July, 
1866, and became Prime Minister when Derby re- 
tired on account of ill health in February, 1868, but 
he with difficulty retained his position up to De- 
cember of the same year. It is only since Feb- 
ruary, 1874, that is, after his seventieth year, that 
Lord Beaconsfield has attained decisive influence 
as an English statesman ; and in order to judge 
him justly in the intervening years, it must not be 
forgotten that he was not in a position, with the 
short and sporadic possession of power that fell to 

312 



Disraeli as Leader of the Opposition, 313 

his lot, to carry out large or matured projects. 
During these years, the part he played was chiefly 
that of critic. 

Lord Aberdeen's Coalition Ministry united in it- 
self, according to Lord Palmerston's definition, " all 
the men of talent and experience in the House of 
Commons, with the exception of Disraeli." Dis- 
raeli, therefore, immediately christened it with the 
nickname of the " Ministry of all the Talents," and 
it began with a series of indiscretions and mistakes. 
At a time when the alliance with France was a ne- 
cessity for England, members of the Cabinet were 
guilty of using grossly insulting language towards 
the emperor in public speeches, when almost imme- 
diately afterwards, the Government had to sue for 
his confidence and friendship. Sir Charles Wood 
told his hearers that " a despotism like the present 
had not reigned in France,, even in the time of 
Napoleon I. ; " and in another speech he expressed 
his conviction that Napoleon III., without carrying 
on a regular war with England, " would suddenly 
land various corps of five thousand men on our 
coasts," and asked the meeting to consider " how 
their wives and daughters would be treated then." 
Another member of the Government, Sir James 
Graham, First Lord of the Admiralty, openly called 
Napoleon " a despot, who was treading the liberties 
of forty millions of men under foot." This was fine 
14 



314 Lord Be aeons field. 

sport for a leader of the Opposition, and Disraeli 
closed a speech, brimming over with wit and satire, 
with the query : Are these utterances indiscretions ? 
Can indiscretions proceed from " all the Talents " ? 
Impossible ! 

How the Aberdeen Ministry drifted into the war 
with Russia, without resolve or forethought, is well 
known ; the careless words of the Prime Minis- 
ter, " We drift into a war," have become historic. 
Palmerston, whose plan was to act with energy and 
promptitude, was compelled to tender his resigna- 
tion ; and just at the moment when the Russo- 
Turkish war began with the defeat at Sinope, Lord 
John Russell, the most maladroit member of the 
Government of " all the Talents," brought in a 
Reform Bill, taking advantage, so to speak, of the 
interval during which Palmerston, who had a 
marked aversion to all reform schemes, was out of 
the Ministry. The decidedly warlike feeling of the 
country, however, induced Palmerston to withdraw 
his resignation ; and Disraeli had the opportunity, 
without speaking against reform in the abstract, of 
preparing an important defeat for the Ministry, by 
inveighing against Lord John Russell's folly in 
choosing a moment like this for bringing forward 
the difficult domestic question of Parliamentary 
reform, when the nation was rallying its forces for 
the conflict at hand. 



Disraeli as Leader of the Opposition. 315 

He successfully impugned both the attitude of 
the Government towards Turkey, and the wretched 
administration of 'the army. Disraeli's special ten- 
derness for Turkey has often been ridiculed ; but 
surely no impartial person can fail to see that, from 
the English standpoint, he was right in upholding 
Turkey as long as possible. And the members of 
the Coalition Ministry were as imprudent in the 
expressions about this ally of England as they had 
been about the French. One of them said that the 
sultan " had chiefly himself to blame for his misfor- 
tunes, through his senseless policy and reckless mis- 
government ; " another Minister, Gladstone, made a 
speech at Manchester, in which he gave the country 
to understand that the situation of Turkey was 
hopeless ; and these were the assurances with which 
they called upon the nation to fight for the integ- 
rity of the Turkish empire. The beginning of the 
Crimean war agreed only too well, as we all know, 
with the vacillating policy which had preceded it. 
The leader of the Opposition in December, 1854, 
summed up the results of the Ministerial prepara- 
tions for the first few months of the campaign in 
the following words: — " You have chosen a winter 
campaign, and what have been your preparations for 
it ? In November you gave orders to build huts. 
You have not yet sent out that winter clothing 
which is adapted to the climate. . . . You have 



316 Lord Beacons fie Id. 

commenced a winter campaign in a country where 
it most of all should be avoided. You have com- 
menced such a campaign — a great blunder, without 
providing for it — the next great blunder. The huts 
will arrive in January, and the furs probably will 
meet the sun in May. These are your prepara- 
tions !" * 

It was not necessary to be an eminent politician 
to lash with severity the gross mistakes of the 
Government, and no one will attribute any special 
merit to Disraeli for doing it ; w r hat is much more 
to his credit is the way in which he then, as ever 
afterwards, at critical periods, put the interests of 
the country entirely above those of his party — the 
genuine patriotism with which, from the moment 
when the Government and the country took up the 
war in earnest, he offered his support to the Govern- 
ment. Even before the outbreak of the war, when 
speaking in favour of a peaceful solution of the 
question, at the close of his speech he addressed the 
following words to the Ministry: — " But, if war 
should be found inevitable, the Opposition will cor- 
dially and sincerely support their sovereign, and 
maintain the honour and dignity of their country. 
This I can say — I can answer for myself and my 
friends, that no future Wellesley on the banks of the 

* Hitchman's " Public Life of the Earl of Beaconsfield," vol. i. p. 
422. 



Disraeli as Leader of the Opposition. 317 

Danube will have to make a bitter record of the ex- 
ertions of an English Opposition that depreciated 
his efforts and that ridiculed his talents. We shall 
remember what we believe to be our duty to this 
country ; and however protracted may be the war, 
however unfortunate your counsels (to the Minis- 
try), at least we shall never despair of the re- 
public." * 

This retrospective attack on the conduct of the 
Whigs towards Wellington cannot be considered 
unnatural, when we recall the English demonstra- 
tions against Turkey during the last Russo-Turkish 
war. The Whigs, who were then agitating against 
Lord Beaconsfield, had neither his self-control nor 
the patriotism which determined his attitude before 
the Crimean war. And when, after the retirement 
of Aberdeen, and the futile attempts of Lord Derby 
and Lord Russell to form a new administration, 
Palmerston took the conduct of the war in his 
firmer hand as Prime Minister, Disraeli again de- 
clared that her Majesty might firmly rely on her 
Parliament in the renewed conflict ; there was no 
sum which her Parliament would not joyfully grant, 
and her people joyfully raise, to protect the honour 
and interests of the empire. 

Only compare Gladstone's noisy demonstrations 

* Hitchman's " Public Life of the Earl of Beaconsfield," vol. i. p. 
413. 



318 Lord Be aeons fie Id. 

and fanatical denunciations of Lord Beaconsfield's 
Oriental policy in the course of 1877 ! 

The Treaty of Peace with Russia resulted in dis- 
appointment. A feeling prevailed that the results 
gained were in no kind of proportion to the sacri- 
fices made, and Palmerston himself did not expect, 
as Lord John Russell tells us, in his " Recollections 
and Suggestions," that the Treaty of 1856 would 
last the fifteen years it did last. And yet the war 
with Russia was scarcely over, when Palmerston's 
restless foreign policy involved England in a series 
of new wars. The unjust and repulsive war with 
China, a little war with Persia, and difficulties with 
the kingdom of Naples and the United States, fol- 
lowed quickly upon each other. After a cutting 
speech from Disraeli on the Chinese war, Palmer- 
ston found himself in a minority in the Commons, 
and a dissolution followed. But When the new 
elections showed his undiminished popularity by a 
large majority for the Government, and when just 
at the same time the Indian Mutiny broke out, Dis- 
raeli again gave up his opposition. He gave the 
assurance in the House of Commons, that " it was 
his intention to support the Sovereign and the 
Government in all the measures which so grave 
and critical an event might demand." This loyal 
behaviour did not, of course, however, preclude 
a very different opinion of the Mutiny from the 



Disraeli as Leader of the Opposition. 319 

Ministerial one. He met with no success with a 
motion for the appointment of a Committee to 
inquire into the causes which led the natives to 
rebel, but long before the Government understood 
the ominous threats or, at least, would acknowledge 
the danger, Disraeli foresaw the coming storm. To 
his first' question on Indian matters, he received an 
answer from the Ministerial benches, that it was 
altogether an insignificant affair ; the discontent was 
almost entirely confined to the army in Bengal, and 
any attempt at mutiny would be sure to be nipped 
in the bud by Lord Canning. Disraeli replied that 
the disturbances in India did not appear to him at 
all like a mutiny among the soldiers, but like a 
revolt of the people. He was not to be put off with 
the usual explanation of the origin of the mutiny, 
the introduction of the Enfield rifle, with cartridges 
greased with beef suet and lard ; he allowed that 
this disregard of the religious prejudices of the 
Hindoos may have been the immediate occasion, 
but he ascribed the Mutiny to much more general 
causes. He showed that all the great Indian 
statesmen had been in favour of the principle of 
respecting the rights and privileges, the laws, cus- 
toms, and religions of the nations to be governed ; 
and brought forward instances to show that, in all 
these respects, this rule had been violated. There 
was one passage in the speech which threw light 



320 Lord Beacons field. 

on his subsequent Indian policy. He told the 
House that it must, no matter whether tidings of 
victory or defeat reached it, proclaim to the people 
of India that the relation between them and their 
true sovereign, Queen Victoria, would be more 
closely drawn. The House must, in this affair, ex- 
ert an influence on public opinion in India, and it 
was only through the imagination that the public 
opinion of Eastern nations could be worked upon. 

Disraeli recognized, better than the statesmen in 
office, the necessity of not wounding Asiatic preju- 
dices if you wished to be an Asiatic sovereign, and 
he knew better than any man what vast power Ori- 
ental imagination offered the British Government 
for confirming its supremacy. 

During the five years which elapsed between the 
first time that Disraeli held office, and the second, 
he trained himself to be a trustworthy and watchful 
party leader of the first class. He was a master of 
the art of keeping his followers together, knew how 
to encourage the younger men, and to gain the 
elder ones by recognition of their services ; above 
all things, he possessed the gift of never wounding 
anybody's vanity; as leader of Opposition, he did, 
not thrust any aspiring colleague into the shade; 
and later on, when Prime Minister, he permitted his 
colleagues to explain and defend their opinions and 
actions themselves. In this, also, he was a contrast 



Disraeli as Leader of the Opposition. 321 

to Gladstone, who, in the conviction, perhaps not 
incorrect in itself, that he could best advocate the 
views of the Ministry in person, has subjected his 
colleagues to many an unwise humiliation. And 
while, by these qualities, Disraeli was increasingly 
gaining the confidence and devotion of the Con- 
servative party, he was one of the two or three Par- 
liamentary orators on whose lips all parties hung. 
There was soon no one whose words were looked 
for with greater eagerness, no one who was greeted 
with more applause. Seldom has the art of compell- 
ing an assembly to listen to every word of the 
speaker been carried to greater perfection. 

Towards Palmerston, Disraeli adopted neither the 
disdainful attitude which he had assumed towards 
Peel, nor the satirical style which he usually assumed 
in fhe Opposition towards Aberdeen and Russell. 
He used, half ironically, to take Palmerston, whom 
he once jestingly called the " Tory chief of a Radi- 
cal Cabinet," under his protection as a distant ally. 
But when, after Orsini's attack on Napoleon III., in 
the beginning of 1858, Palmerston took in so unman- 
ly a style, Walewski's insulting note, calling Eng- 
land the protector of assassins, and the address of 
the French colonels to the emperor, printed in the 
Moniteur, asking permission to call England to ac- 
count, " that land of impurity, that infamous nest," 
and obligingly laid before the House the Bill against 
14* 



322 Lord Beaconsfield. 

conspirators desired by Napoleon, Disraeli helped 
to overturn his Ministry, and the administration 
once more fell into the hands of Lord Derby. 

It was the misfortune of the new Cabinet that, as 
previously, it had a majority only in the Commons. 
It tried to make up by skill what it lacked in power. 
At first Disraeli's tact succeeded in pacifying the 
French Government, without any humiliating con- 
cession. He spoke of the alliance with France with 
a warmth that was obviously sincere. " The alli- 
ance between England and France," he said, " rests 
upon a principle, which is wholly independent of 
forms of government, and even of the personal 
character of the rulers." Then passing over to his 
youthful acquaintance of Lady Blessington's salon, 
he lauded the French emperor as an eminently 
gifted man : " The Emperor Napoleon is not oflly a 
ruler, but a statesman. He possesses not only great 
knowledge of human nature in general, but of the 
human nature of the Englishman in particular," etc. 

With similar firmness he arranged another pain- 
ful affair which the previous Government had vainly 
attempted, the release of two Englishmen taken 
prisoners by the Neapolitan Government, on board 
the steamer Cagliari, and who, though quite inno- 
cent, had been languishing for months in horrible 
prisons, and could not be released because Palmer- 
ston, in order to punish the King of the Two Sicilies, 



Second Ministerial Office. 323 

had taken the futile step of withdrawing the Eng- 
lish Ambassador from Naples. 

Two important matters were then decided by- 
legislation. By a compromise between Lord John 
Russell and Disraeli, India was placed directly un- 
der the dominion of the British Crown, a centraliz- 
ing measure demanded by circumstances, and which 
is in full accord with the subsequent Imperial policy 
so called. Further, Lord John Russell brought in 
a Bill under the Derby-Disraeli administration, by 
which the House of Commons was opened to the 
Jews ; and the first Jew admitted to Parliament, 
Baron Lionel de Rothschild, was introduced by 
Disraeli. 

In 1 83 1 Macaulay wrote his famous essay on the 
Emancipation of the Jews r in 1833 the law for their 
emancipation was passed, and in 1847 two Jews 
were elected members of Parliament. But the law 
was nugatory, and the elections null and void, so 
long as the words in the formula of the oath, " on 
the true faith of a Christian," stood in the way. It 
was now for the first time made permissible to omit 
them ; and thus by a chance, which seems like in- 
tention, it fell to the lot of the chief of the formerly 
intolerant Tory party, and the creator of Sidonia 
as representative of the literary and political intel- 
ligence of the Jewish race, to introduce the rep- 
resentatives of Jewish commercial enterprise and 



324 Lord Be aeons field. 

wealth to the exercise of their political rights as 
citizens. 

Although Disraeli's budget in April, 1858, was 
well received, the position of the Government was 
extremely weak. The only possible means of ob- 
taining a majority was to bring in a Reform Bill. 
It had always been Disraeli's desire to snatch this 
card from the hands of the Whigs, and he now 
-made the first attempt, which was encompassed 
with difficulties of all sorts. The Tories regarded 
every innovation in popular representation with ex- 
treme suspicion, and it was necessary for Disraeli, in 
order to avoid being left in the lurch by his own 
party, so to prepare the Bill that the Conservatives 
might hope for an increase of votes from a consider- 
able increase of agricultural voters; on the other 
hand, it was easy to foresee that the Liberals would 
think any measure proposed by the Tories inade- 
quate, even if quite as honest in intention and going 
as far as those which they themselves had in re- 
serve. What an egg-dance Disraeli had to execute 
is clearly shown by the fact that no sooner was his 
scheme of reform laid before his colleagues, than two 
of them resigned — Henley, because he desired to 
see a much further extension of the franchise among 
the working people ; and Walpole, because he did 
not wish to see the concessions made to them in 
1832 exceeded. The reception the Bill met with 



Second Ministerial Office, 325 

in the Cabinet was ominous of its further fate. It 
was assailed with fierce criticism on all sides. The 
whole of the press was opposed to it: the Tory 
organs, because they saw no reason why they 
should have a Reform Bill from Disraeli, who had 
vehemently opposed it when originated by Lord 
John Russell ; the Liberal papers, first, because 
they did not see why the Tory Ministry should 
have the merit of solving the great reform question, 
and next, because they had all concurred for years 
in calling Disraeli a political mountebank, without 
any real convictions, and they considered his Re- 
form Bill only fresh evidence how little he was un 
homme serieux. In Parliament itself, the Bill was 
opposed by Lord John Russell and the Radicals 
with vehemence and scorn as nothing but a sham. 
The scheme was certainly not democratic, although 
it went further than the Whigs' next Reform Bill ; 
but it is 'certain that the Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer was even then in favour of a much more 
Radical change in the franchise ; he even proposed 
household franchise in the Cabinet, but was com- 
pelled to abandon it, convinced that it was impossi- 
ble to pass it at that time. The Bill, being laid 
before the House in a form which was neither fish 
nor fowl, soon succumbed to the attacks of its ene- 
mies ; the Government, which had too often before 
been in the minority, had in this case a majority of 



326 Lord Be aeons field. 

thirty-nine against it. The Liberal press was, of 
course, triumphant ; but it is interesting to find one 
among the many merely scoffing articles which hits 
with great subtlety and acumen the peculiarity of 
Lord Beaconsfield : — " Gone for ever is the opportu- 
nity which Mr. Disraeli is supposed to have been 
aspiring after, since the first doors of office opened 
to his ambition — that of revealing himself to the 
people of this country as at heart their friend, as 
one with them in political sympathy and purpose, 
though it was his policy to serve, that he might 
ultimately command, an aristocratic faction." * 
This sarcastic journalist was only mistaken on one 
point — the opportunity had by no means gone for 
ever. 

Disraeli did not accept his defeat ; as in all such 
cases, he wished first to appeal to the country; 
Parliament was dissolved, and the elections took 
place amidst great excitement. They occurred just 
as the Franco-Austrian war was breaking out, and, 
curiously enough, English foreign sympathies had 
more weight in the scale than home politics. The 
people wished to see Italy free and united ; the 
Whig leaders had expressed, in season and out of 
season, their warm sympathy for Sardinia, and their 
detestation of Austrian and Papal tyranny, and had 

* Hitchman's "Public Life of the Earl of Beaconsfield," vol. ii. 
p. 112. 



i Second Ministerial Office. 327 

thereby gained popularity. The Derby Ministry, 
on the contrary, did all in their power to avert the 
conflict between France and Italy, did not to the 
last moment give up the hope of preserving peace, 
and were, therefore, suspected of truckling to re- 
actionary Austria, while they only sought to curb 
the Emperor Napoleon's warlike tendencies for the 
sake of British interests. 

On attentively reading Disraeli's speeches in 
those days, on foreign policy, it is impossible to 
doubt that his sympathies were much more with the 
old French allies than with Austria ; but the impres- 
sion would also be conveyed that he had no idea of 
the genius or resolution of Cavour, who wanted to 
bring on the war ; he was evidently not more clear- 
sighted with regard to Bismarck just before the out- 
break of the Franco-German war ; he spoke even 
then of the possibility of peace being maintained 
by wise mediation. The grand, simple foreign pol- 
icy of these statesmen was so foreign to his nature, 
that his usual gift of divination failed him. Until 
the unity of Italy was an accomplished fact, he 
coldly called all her efforts to attain it impracticable 
dreams, sure to be defeated by Austria, and attrib- 
uted them to the interest of the Catholic powers 
in securing the temporal sovereignty of the Pope. 
The English constituencies, in whose eyes Austria 
was personified by General Haynau, on whom the 



328 Lord Beaconsfield. 

London draymen had inflicted lynch law for his 
cruel suppression of the revolts in Lombardy and 
Hungary, placed the Government again in a minor- 
ity ; on the first division in the Commons, the Cabi- 
net was in a minority of thirteen, and thus the fate 
of the second Derby-Disraeli Ministry was sealed. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

OPPOSITION, AND THE REFORM MINISTRY. 

THE reign of the new Administration (Palmer- 
ston-Russell-Gladstone) was not a very glorious one ; 
the dignity of England was lowered under it in the 
eyes of the whole world, and its blundering foreign 
policy was accompanied by two futile attempts to 
solve the complicated Reform question. 

The first attempt, in i860, was so weak and insig- 
nificant, that no one could be surprised that it 
proved a fiasco. When the measure, which ex- 
tended the franchise still less than the Conservative 
Bill of the previous session, was laid before the 
House, it was looked upon by both sides as a mere 
show ; it was well known that Palmerston was 
against any reform, and that Lord John Russell only 
brought in the Bill for conventional reasons — he 
watched its fate with so much indifference, that he 
had nothing better to say in its favour than that its 
effects would be extremely limited. The Times 
wittily remarked that something must be said, pro- 
mises must be kept, the congealed blood of Saint 
Reform must be liquefied once in the year. En- 

329 



330 Lord Beaconsfield. 

thusiasm, ay, even faith in the cause had long 
since disappeared, and now we had a cautious man 
proposing a cautious measure to a cautious as- 
sembly. 

Under the pressure of public opinion in the coun- 
try and in Parliament, and in reply to Disraeli's 
appeal, Russell withdrew the Bill. 

During the next few years, the leader of the 
Opposition maintained his reputation more than 
ever as a keen and distinguished critic of the foreign 
policy of the Government ; and it was not a difficult 
part to play, for that policy falls mainly into three 
great groups of blunders — those relating to the 
great war in North America, to the colonies, and to 
Poland and Denmark. 

It is well known that the Ministry did not adhere 
with statesman-like prudence to an unambiguous 
neutrality during the North American civil war; 
they rushed hastily into a recognition of the South- 
ern States as a military power ; they did not conceal 
their sympathies for the " chivalrous " confederates; 
there were no bounds to the national jealousy for 
the great republic now endangered ; Gladstone even 
went so far in 1862 as to say of Jefferson Davis, in a 
public speech, that he had succeeded in making " an 
independent nation " of the Southern States. It all 
the more deserves to be recorded that Disraeli, 
whose party almost unanimously sympathized with 



Opposition, and the Reform Ministry, 331 

the slave States, observed the strictest neutrality 
during the whole war, in order not to increase the 
difficulties of the Government ; he generally kept 
silence, and only spoke a few times, partly to criti- 
cize the vacillating attitude of the Government and 
Gladstone's impolitic expressions, and partly in a 
conciliatory spirit, to recognize as honourable the 
conduct of the Washington Cabinet in the Trent 
affair. 

The indifference of the Whig Ministers to the 
Colonies found about this time striking expression 
in the public utterance of the Duke of Newcastle 
(Colonial Secretary), that he " should see a dissolu- 
tion of the bond between the mother country and 
Canada with the greatest pleasure." These words 
were strongly reprehended by Disraeli, and his ap- 
pointment of the Queen's son-in-law, the Marquis of 
Lome, sixteen years hater, as Governor-General of 
Canada, is a striking contrast to them. The leader 
of the Tory party protested with still greater energy 
in another affair of the same kind — the proposed 
cession of the Ionian Islands to Greece, on the oc- 
casion of the accession of King George. That the 
cessation of the British protectorate was in accord- 
ance with the repeatedly expressed wish of the pop- 
ulation, was an aspect of the question which the 
Imperial politician regarded as of no moment what- 
ever. What he laid stress on was the breach that 



332 Lord Beaconsjield. 

would be made in the chain of England's Mediter- 
ranean garrisons in the way to India, and the dis- 
crepancy in the policy of Lord Palmerston, who 
had, with great impetuosity, placed obstacles in the 
way of the construction of the Suez Canal on be- 
half of Turkey, and was now ready to weaken Tur- 
key by the aggrandizement of Greece. The fol- 
lowing passage in his speech, directed against hu- 
manitarian considerations, is significant from its 
reckless British energy, and psychologically inter- 
esting : — " Professors and rhetoricians invent for 
every event a system, and for every isolated case a 
principle. You will not, however, I hope, leave the 
destinies of the British Empire to boys and pedants. 
The statesmen who construct, and the warriors who 
achieve, are only influenced by the instinct of power, 
and animated by the love of country. Those are 
the feelings, and those the methods, which form 
empires." It cannot be denied that the acquisition 
of the protectorate of Cyprus in 1878 was an in- 
structive contrast to the cession of the Ionian Isles 
in 1863. 

It required some courage in Disraeli in the same 
year to expose himself to unpopularity, by venturing 
to blame the sentimental conduct of the Govern- 
ment with regard to Poland. Everybody is now 
agreed that England's weak and noisy interference 
in the domestic affairs of Russia was nothing but 



Opposition, and the Reform Ministry, 333 

a mischief to unhappy Poland, as it deeply wounded 
the sensitiveness of Russia and spurred on the 
authorities to greater cruelties ; but at that time 
public opinion only regarded Lord John Russell's 
despatches as proofs of magnanimity, and Dis- 
raeli's criticism as evidence of servile feeling. 

Closely connected with the action of the Ministry 
in respect to Poland was their still more blamable 
attitude in the Danish question. First, Lord John 
Russell offended the Emperor of the French by not 
only declining, but uncourteously declining, his in- 
vitation to a European Congress, in which the 
Treaty of Vienna was to be revised ; and he thereby 
earned the malicious satisfaction of France, at his 
bungling and unsuccessful attempts to arrange the 
Danish-German question. In a despatch in 1862, 
he called upon Denmark to yield to the demands 
of Germany, and after she had declined to follow 
this advice, it was disavowed by the Prime Minister; 
for Palmerston, fully convinced, as it appeared, that 
Denmark was in the right, did not hesitate to make 
a solemn declaration in the House of Commons, 
that in case her territory were encroached upon, 
Denmark would not be left to herself. Her terri- 
tory was encroached upon, yet Denmark found her- 
self left entirely alone. Disraeli exposed this dis- 
crepancy in a brilliant speech, and demonstrated 
that there had been " the same weakness, confusion, 



334 Lord Beacons field. 

vacillation, and inconsistency" in the Danish affair 
as in the other diplomatic action of the Ministry. 
A vote of want of confidence was proposed in the 
Lords, to the effect that "while the course pursued 
by her Majesty's Government had failed to maintain 
their avowed policy of upholding the integrity and 
independence of Denmark, it had lowered the just 
influence of this country in the counsels of Europe, 
and thereby diminished the securities of peace." 

The vote was passed in the Lords, but thrown 
out in the Commons, through Gladstone's opposi- 
tion, by a majority of eighteen. This time, how- 
ever, it was the simple truth which was defeated by 
the majority. 

The death of Palmerston brought Lord John 
Russell, and with him schemes of reform, to the 
helm in 1865. The extension of that Parliamentary 
Reform which Lord John Russell had called " de- 
finitive " — a term soon repented of, often ridiculed, 
and which gave him the nickname of " Finality 
Jack" — had become his favourite idea. But as he 
was far more imbued with a conviction of its 
necessity than with a passion for it as a matter of 
justice, all his later reform projects bore the stamp 
of indecision ; they were brought forward rather 
with a view of putting an end to the everlasting 
reform difficulties, and to stop the mouths of the 
Radicals, than from a political sense of duty. The 



Opposition, and the Reform Ministry. 335 

Reform Bill of 1866 was far more liberal than that 
of i860 — it would have created 400,000 new elec- 
tors, half of whom belonged to the working classes ; 
but it was not skilfully prepared, and, as usual, 
satisfied neither Conservatives nor Liberals ; a sec- 
tion of the latter even, alarmed at the consequences 
of so democratic a franchise, voted against the Bill. 
Disraeli's opposition was based on his objection on 
principle to the Americanizing of the constitution, 
which he had denounced in his " Vindication of the 
English Constitution," and often since, as well as on 
the patchwork character of the measure. Neverthe- 
less, it was quite evident in the next session that 
his opposition was more actuated by party rancour 
than by considerations of principle. The Russell- 
Gladstone Ministry fell with the Reform Bill. 

For the third time Disraeli became Chancellor of 
the Exchequer in a Derby Cabinet, for the third 
time without being able to command a majority in 
the Commons, and for the third time also, he was 
decidedly not favoured by public opinion. By de- 
grees, as the great reform agitation increased, this 
disfavour grew to absolute hatred, which was mainly 
directed against him, as the chief opponent of the 
last Ministerial Reform Bill. 

It was now a matter of course that the Govern- 
ment must take the Reform question in hand, and 
push it forward with all possible energy. Reform 



336 Lord Beacons field. 

Bills had been brought in, in 1852, 1854, 1858, 1859, 
i860, and 1866, and had all been rejected. Lord 
John Russell, Lord Aberdeen, Lord Palmerston, 
Lord Derby, and Lord John Russell twice, had 
tried to untie the Gordian knot ; Disraeli had pro- 
fited by the mistakes of his predecessors, and was 
determined to stake all his skill and perseverance 
in obtaining a permanent result. He began, there- 
fore, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, by making a 
statement, which called forth roars of laughter, 
that in the opinion of the Ministry the Reform 
question was no longer one that ought to determine 
the fate of a Government. Without allowing him- 
self to be disturbed by the laughter, he proceeded 
to state that this view was founded on the consid- 
eration that all parties had tried to carry a Reform 
Bill, and had all failed. Though he spoke cau- 
tiously and carefully on the whole, he could not 
deny himself the satisfaction of emphasizing his 
old doctrine, that the Whig Reform Bill of 1832 
had placed the government of the country in the 
hands of the middle class, and had abolished the 
franchise of the working classes, as it had existed 
before 1832 — a proceeding, he added, not without 
finesse, "which perhaps was natural for a party 
which had founded their policy rather upon liberal 
opinions than popular rights." He stated further 
that the Government, in order to avoid the pre- 



Opposition, and the Reform Ministry. 337 

vious miscarriages of the Reform Bill, intended to 
ascertain the prevailing views in the House by 
submitting resolutions to it. This was the method 
adopted by Disraeli in the Jews Bill, and if it was —* 
not gratifying to his vanity, it had at least the great 
advantage that the Government avoided the diffi- 
culty of bringing in a ready-made measure, and of 
having to stand or fall by it. The resolutions, 
intended to feel the pulse of the House, were not 
favourably received ; their effect would have been 
to create about 400,000 new electors, but by vari- 
ous restrictions, among them a double franchise for 
certain classes of voters, they tried to gain over the 
Conservatives for the innovations. A new Bill was 
demanded, and in March, 1867, Disraeli laid it be- 
fore the House. The result, according to the open- 
ing speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
would by no means be a popular tyranny ; a fourth 
part of the electors would belong to the aristocracy, 
a fourth part to the working classes, and the re- 
maining half to the middle class ; but at the same 
time, he had to make the painful communication to 
the House, that three of the most important mem- 
bers of the Government, Lord Carnarvon, General 
Peel, and Lord Cranborne (the present Marquis of 
Salisbury), disapproving of the proposed extension 
of the franchise, had laid down their portfolios. 
This split in the Cabinet occurred at an inoppor- 
15 



338 Lord Beaconsfield. 

tune moment, but it was to be expected, for the 
Bill was far more Radical than that of the Whigs, 
the most Radical which had been laid before the 
House. It was based upon the principle of house- 
hold suffrage, that is, that every man who rents a 
house should have a vote, irrespective of the amount 
of rent ; and the Conservative guarantees, which 
were to some extent to make up for these great 
concessions, consisted chiefly in the limitation of 
the franchise to ratepayers, in allowing two votes, 
as before mentioned, to certain electors possessing 
a double qualification, and on the condition that 
those householders only should have a vote who 
had rented a house for two years. The most inter- 
esting remark, in a psychological point of view, 
which fell from the Chancellor in defending this 
measure from the attacks of the ultra-Conservatives, 
was his reply to Lord Cranborne — then his vehe- 
ment opponent, but now his thoroughly broken-in 
colleague — who angrily called attention to the dis- 
crepancy between Disraeli's reserved attitude to- 
wards reform in 1858, and his present revolutionary 
Bill. Disraeli appealed to the testimony of those still 
living, that even then, in the Derby Cabinet of that 
time, he had proposed the principle of household 
suffrage as the only trustworthy basis of Reform.* 

* Compare the speech "Representation of the People," in 
" Speeches on the Conservative Policy," p. 156. The interesting 



Opposition, and the Reform Ministry. 339 

But it was from the Liberal party, and not from 
the extreme Tories, that the Bill had to sustain the 
most threatening attacks. Gladstone subjected it, 
point by point, to severe, and on the whole skilful 
criticism. Bit by bit the Conservative guarantees 
fell beneath his axe, and to the general surprise, it 
appeared that Disraeli himself was the first to de- 
clare his willingness to let them go. The Chancel- 
lor did not even attempt to defend the double vote ; 
he had, in submitting the resolution, declared this 
measure to be unimportant, and immediately gave 
way. He further renounced the restriction of the 
franchise to ratepayers, and the two years' pos- 
session for which one year was substituted. He 
even conceded the franchise to lodgers paying £\o 
rent, and declared that he had always in his heart 
been favourable to this measure. He gave way on 
every point on which it was necessary to give way 
in order to pass a Bill, even if not his original one, 
and by a dexterous manoeuvre, which caused the de- 
fection of about thirty moderate members of the 
Liberal party, he succeeded in defeating Gladstone's 
amendment on the first reading. 

collection of speeches " On Parliamentary Reform " only extends as 
far as 1866, but it affords a good insight into the stages through 
which the reform schemes and Lord Beaconsfield have passed. 
See, for example, pp. 82, 175, 276, 351, ff. Compare also W. N. 
Molesworth, " The History of England from the Year 1830," iii. 
p. 412, ff. 



34-0 Lord Be aeons fie Id. 

The activity which Disraeli displayed during this 
session may, without exaggeration, be truly called 
gigantic ; he spoke on the Reform Bill alone no less 
than 310 times, and introduced his budget with a 
speech, the masterly clearness of which found gen- 
eral recognition, and even the Times, then Disraeli's 
determined opponent, felt compelled to write a com- 
mendatory article. Thanks to this extraordinary 
energy, he succeeded in steering clear of all threat- 
ening dangers, and in bringing his Reform Bill safe 
into port. There were, it is true, but a few great 
outlines of the original measure left ; indeed, an 
amendment from the Liberals, by which the number 
of electors was nearly quadrupled, had been adopted. 
But little as the Bill, as finally passed, agreed with 
the original scheme, there was certainly no want of 
accord between it and the personal views of the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer ; for Disraeli had no 
fear whatever that the Bill would result in a future 
government by the masses ; he met the forebodings 
of the present Marquis of Salisbury with great con- 
fidence, and twelve years' experience has proved 
that he was right. 

By July, 1867, this important measure, which es- 
sentially changed the basis of the British Constitu- 
tion, had passed the ordeal of the three readings, 
and was, in fact, the realization of Disraeli's old 
programme : the maintenance of the people's rights 



Opposition, and the Reform Ministry, 341 

by Tory leadership. A passage in a speech at a 
banquet in Edinburgh, given in his honour, which 
has been often quoted and much ridiculed, throws 
an interesting light on Disraeli's conduct in this 
business. " Now mark this, because these are things 
which you may not have heard in any speech which 
has been made in the city of Edinburgh ; I had to 
prepare the mind of the country — to educate, if it be 
not too arrogant to use such a phrase — to educate 
our party, which is a large party, and, of course, re- 
quires its attention to be called to questions of this 
character with some pressure ; and I had to prepare 
the mind of Parliament and of the country in this 
question of Reform." * 

It appears to me that Disraeli here utters, in a 
half-humorous form, the most serious and most 
deeply felt words which ever passed his lips in ref- 
erence to his relations with the Tory party. He 
had, as Wellington and Peel had formerly done, to 
pass liberal measures as Conservative leader, simply 
because, in this century and in a country like Eng- 
land, such measures only can be passed ; but, unlike 
his predecessors, he had never shared the rigid 
Conservatism of his party, but from the first, he 
regarded it as a necessity to put an end to Conser- 
vatism of this sort, and as his mission to do it. He 

* O'Connor's "Life of Lord Beaconsfield," p. 577. 



342 Lord Beaconsfield. 

strikingly says, in the speech at Edinburgh above 
mentioned : " It is as fallacious an opinion in poli- 
tics, as in science, to suppose that you can establish 
a party upon resistance to change ; and for this rea- 
son, that change is inevitable in a progressive coun- 
try. Change is inevitable, but the point is whether 
that change shall be carried out in deference to the 
manners, the customs/the laws, the traditions of the 
people, or whether it shall be carried in deference 
to abstract principles and arbitrary and general doc- 
trines." 

It must undoubtedly be regarded as a real merit 
in Lord Beaconsfield to have brought the old Tory 
aristocracy to follow then, and to follow still, a 
leader with views like these. 

In February, 1868, an event occurred which 
was destined to realize Benjamin Disraeli's wildest 
youthful dreams. Lord Derby retired from public 
life, and warmly recommended the Chancellor of 
the Exchequer to the Queen, as his only possible 
successor. By a singular chance, Disraeli was sum- 
moned to the Queen by his first victorious political 
opponent, the son of Earl Grey, who defeated him 
at his election at High Wycombe, and now held 
an office at Court, and Disraeli left the Sovereign's 
presence as Prime Minister. Little as he was liked 
in many quarters, there was a general feeling in the 
country that he had honourably won the distinction 



Opposition, and the Reform Ministry, 343 

now accorded to him, by his rare capabilities and 
persistent hard work for many years; and when he 
walked for the first time in his new honours from 
Downing Street to the House of Commons, he was 
greeted with enthusiastic applause, both on the way 
and in the lobby of the House. And yet this cov- 
eted position was literally scarcely won before it 
had to be looked upon as lost. The Prime Minister 
was, and continued to be, in a minority, just as the 
Chancellor of the Exchequer had been. The first 
serious debate was sure to cause his fall, and the 
Fenian disturbances in Ireland soon furnished the 
occasion. Gladstone, supported by the whole of his 
party, proposed the abolition of the Irish State 
Church. In vain Disraeli characterized it as a 
senseless half-measure, for the opinions which led to 
it must lead to the abolition of the State Church in 
England and Scotland ; in vain he assumed his most 
unctuous tone in his repeated declarations that 
" the sacred union between Church and State was 
the chief means of our civilization and the sole 
guarantee of religious liberty ; " in vain he finally 
asserted that neither the philosophers who flattered 
themselves that they were advancing the cause of 
liberty, nor the sectaries who dreamed that the 
downfall of ecclesiastical systems would be hast- 
ened, would derive any advantage from the abo- 
lition of the Irish "Church, but only the Pope, a 



344 Lord Beaconsfield. 

foreign ruler, whose authority would be substituted 
for that of the Queen. The Commons were favour- 
able to the measure, and when the new elections 
took place, and the Prime Minister hoped to earn 
thanks for his Reform Bill, now for the first time 
coming into force, the people returned a House in 
which he had twice the majority against him that 
he had before. Before Parliament met, Disraeli va- 
cated his post as Premier in favour of Gladstone. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

"LOTHAIR," AND FOURTH MINISTERIAL OFFICE. 

In looking back to the doctrines first propounded 
by Disraeli, and to his action during the three oc- 
casions of his holding Ministerial office, it will be 
found that there is but one that has been entirely- 
dropped — the doctrine of the personal government 
of the Sovereign. When Sir Robert Peel came into 
conflict with the Queen in 1839, on ^' ls demanding 
the dismissal of the ladies of the Court — the Bed- 
chamber Plot, so called — Disraeli, in spite of his 
theories, justified Sir Robert Peel. When, in 1853, 
the assumed unconstitutional influence of Prince 
Albert was criticized in Parliament, he said not a 
word in defence of " a free Sovereign," and al- 
though it is sometimes said that he has won to so 
unusual an extent ^he favour of the Queen by com- 
plaisant concession, it appears to me, as far as I am 
able to judge, to be always his will which the Queen 
carries out when she maintains her own. 

Although the fall of the Tory Ministry in 1868 
was occasioned by Disraeli's opposition to the abo- 
lition of the Irish Church, he had evidently not di- 
15* 345 



346 Lord Beaconsfield. 

verged in any respect from his youthful opinions as 
to the equal political rights of the Catholics; but, 
like more than one European statesman during the 
years preceding the proclamation of Papal Infalli- 
bility, he foresaw the approaching Catholic reaction. 
He foretold it at a time when Gladstone set it aside 
as an imaginary danger — to combat it, when too 
late, with the utmost vehemence — and all Disraeli's 
enthusiasm " for the only existing Hebrew-Christian 
Church" vanished before political considerations. 
His opposition was fruitless ; the Gladstone Ministry 
carried the abolition of the Irish Church. 

Disraeli employed his comparative leisure in once 
more writing a novel after a lapse of twenty years, 
the immediate tendency of which was to vindicate 
his warnings against the increasing Popish tenden- 
cies in Great Britain. " Lothair" appeared in 1870. 

This novel bears evident traces of the fact that 
the author was now advanced in years ; it is the 
product of fuller and riper experience than his 
earlier works ; it contains no mere political descrip- 
tions, no attacks on living personages ; it has, in 
fact, the virtues of age ; but taken as a whole, it 
is a repetition of his previous writings, especially 
of "Tancred," and the style betrays the old man. 
During the years immediately preceding, a new 
element had crept into Disraeli's oratorical efforts, 
and his attitude as a Parliamentary speaker — a 



"Lothair" and Fourth Ministerial Office. 347 

stamp of officialism. It is this which gives the final 
touches to his descriptions of character. Not that 
his speeches had ever lost their wit or sarcasm ; he 
was still the same incomparable fencer in debate — 
as, for example, in the last session of the Reform 
Ministry, Mr. Beresford Hope had jestingly alluded 
to the "Asian mystery," and he replied with in- 
comparable humour that when the right honourable 
gentleman spoke of Asian mysteries, there was " a 
Batavian grace about his exhibition which takes 
the sting out of what he has said." After this no 
Englishman could hear Mr. Beresford Hope's name 
mentioned without thinking of " Batavian grace." 
His wit was still sparkling enough, but his pathos, 
which had never been very simple, had considerably 
degenerated. It had always been getting more 
abstract, affected, and pompous, until in " Lothair," 
where he allowed himself full scope, it fell into the 
absurdities which Bret Harte has so capitally paro- 
died. * 

What makes " Lothair " psychologically interest- 
ing arises from the same position of affairs that has 
made the style official, namely, that the author 

* This simple yet first-class conversation existed in the morning- 
room of Plusham, where the mistress of the palatial mansion sat 
involved in the sacred privacy of a circle of her married daughters. 
. . . Beautiful forms leaned over frames glowing with embroidery, 
and beautiful frames leaned over forms inlaid with mother-of-pearl. 
— Bret Harte, " Lothair by Mr. Benjamins." 



348 Lord Be aeons field. 

stands at the summit of his wishes, and has realized 
his schemes, so that he no longer needs to take vari- 
ous circumstances into consideration. "Lothair" 
is a more straightforward book than the " Trilogy," 
so called, which preceded it. It is not only without 
false mysticism, but, in a religious point of view, it 
is the most openly free-thinking work that Disraeli 
has written, so opposed to miracles that it might be 
taken for the work of a Rationalist if the fantastic 
author had not signed it with his fantastic doctrine, 
never renounced, of the sole victorious Semitic prin- 
ciple. 

The conversion of a few fabulously wealthy mem- 
bers of the English aristocracy to the Church of 
Rome during the preceding years, especially of the 
young Marquis of Bute, seerns to have suggested 
the plan of " Lothair." The hero is a young man of 
the same species as the heroes in all Disraeli's later 
novels, of very high rank, more than princely 
wealth, and of a religious temperament like Tan- 
cred. His sole idea on entering life is to attain 
clearness as to the truths of religion, and to learn 
which of the various orthodoxies is the true one. 
His ambition does not extend beyond making 
choice among them ; to make this choice is what he 
understands by attaining to a view of life. He 
resolves to devote part of his colossal fortune to 
building a cathedral, without knowing whether it is 



"Lot hair" and Fourth Ministerial Office. 349 

to be Catholic or Protestant. The influence of his 
guardian, a highly educated and very worldly wise 
cardinal, and of an amiable Catholic family with 
whom he associates, makes the cathedral tend to the 
Papal side, when Lothair meets with " his good 
genius," Theodora, and all his castles and cathe- 
drals in the air crumble away before the breath of 
liberty from her lips. Theodora is (like the young 
girl with the Jacobin cap in Delacroix's picture in 
the Luxembourg) at once a woman and a goddess 
of liberty. An Italian patriot, originally a poor 
street-singer, a child of the people, and an ardent 
free-thinker, she is the powerful feminine chief of 
the secret societies of Italy. For the sake of the 
liberties of nations, she has sacrificed her 'fortune, 
her jewels, her private life, and repose, and ends by 
hazarding her life as a heroine and falling as a 
martyr at Mentana. Theodora's spirit of liberty is 
as fatal to Lothair's narrowness as Venetia's supe- 
riority was to the politico-religious orthodoxy of 
young Cadurcis. Theodora teaches Lothair that 
"'what is called orthodoxy has very little to do 
with religion; and a person may be very religious 
without holding the same dogmas as yourself, or, 
as some think, without holding any.' . . . ' Tell 
me, then, I entreat you, what is your religion?' 
' The true religion, I think,' said Theodora. . . . 
' My conscience.' " 



350 Lord Be aeons field. 

And to his question whether she never needed 
any outward guidance, she answered, " I have 
never heard from priests any truth which my con- 
science had not revealed to me. They use different 
language from what I use, but I find after a time 
that we mean the same thing. What I call time, 
they call eternity ; when they describe heaven, they 
give a picture of earth ; and beings whom they 
style divine, they invest with all the attributes of 
humanity." * 

It is quite intelligible that a woman holding views 
like these does not look upon the Pope and his tem- 
poral power with friendly eyes : " I do not grudge 
him his spiritual subjects ; I am content to leave his 
superstition to time. Time is no longer slow ; his 
scythe mows quickly in this age. But when his de- 
basing creeds are palmed off on man by the author- 
ity of our glorious Capitol, and the slavery of the 
human mind is schemed and carried on in the 
Forum, then, if there be real Roman blood left, and 
I thank my Creator there is much, it is time for it 
to mount and move," said Theodora, f 

It might have been supposed that Lothair's 
acquaintance with Theodora would have delivered 
him for ever from the meshes of Catholicism. But 
such is not the case ; through a chain of surprising, 

* " Lothair," p. 163. - f Ibid. p. 265. 



"Lothair" and Fourth Ministerial Office. 351 

yet entirely natural events, he soon finds himself 
more closely entangled in them than ever. No 
other of Disraeli's novels has a plot so carefully 
constructed as this. When the revolt in Italy 
breaks out, Lothair accompanies the troops as a 
volunteer commanded by Theodora's husband, and 
falls severely wounded at Mentana; but when he is 
brought unconscious to Rome, where all his English 
Catholic acquaintances are staying, the cardinal and 
his spiritual friends find it convenient to spread a 
report of the miraculous rescue of Lothair by means 
of a Madonna revelation, and so to represent the 
matter in the Catholic papers* as to make it appear 
that he had been fighting on the "right" side, and 
had received his wounds as a faithful soldier of the 
Holy Father. When convalescent, he happens to 
take up one of these papers, the style and tone of 
which Disraeli imitates in a masterly way, and in- 
dignantly calls its contents a lie. The cardinal 
coolly answers that he knew well that there were 
two versions of Lothair's position at the battle of 
Mentana, and that the one, which could only have 
originated with Lothair himself, was of a somewhat 
different character, but as this version, which was in 
itself extremely improbable, was not confirmed by 
any external testimony, there was no justification 
for the ill-sounding epithet which Lothair had ap- 
plied to the article in question. Lothair must re- 



352 Lord Beaconsfield. 

member that he had been very ill, and that illness 
often impairs the memory. George IV. thought he 
had taken part in the battle of Waterloo, had even 
commanded at it, etc. Lothair's mind, enfeebled by 
illness, is bound round by a web of the most deli- 
cate yet strongest threads, and his liberty annihi- 
lated ; he is enticed to take part in a Catholic pro- 
cession ; he is gently compelled to allow himself to 
be wondered at and adored as one saved by a 
miracle; he is just about to become a helpless 
victim when the memory of Theodora rouses his 
last energies, and he saves himself by sudden 
and secret flight. After a journey to the East 
and a stay at Jerusalem, inevitable with Disraeli, 
he returns to England, and marries a friend of his 
youth. 

"Lothair" is an attempt to introduce repre- 
sentatives of the various prevailing views of life 
in the present day, and. to make them carry on 
a decisive discussion. A cardinal and a bishop 
represent respectively one of the chief European 
Churches. Theodora is spiritualistic liberalism ; 
the artist Phoebus, a worshipper of nature, Pan- 
theist and a zealous Hellenist, represents free- 
thinking, which deifies the beautiful, the Aryan 
principle; a venerable Syrian of Jewish descent, 
whose family, according to a ^tradition, was the 
first to follow Jesus, is Semiticism personified. 



"Lothair" and Fourth Ministerial Office. 353 

The discussion of modern views of life on Oriental 
soil, is an ever-recurring reminiscence of Disraeli's 
own travels ; it occurs in " Contarini Fleming " and 
in " Tancred," where the race of Ansarey, with its 
beautiful queen, represents Hellenic worship of 
beauty, as Phcebus does in " Lothair ; " but it can 
scarcely be said to have gained in depth in the 
author's latest production. It strikes one as rather 
comic when Phcebus, the zealous devotee of the 
Aryan principle, ends by setting up as Court painter 
in St. Petersburg, in order to paint Semitic subjects 
(incidents from the life of Jesus) for Mongolian con- 
noisseurs. But one wearies of this perpetual and 
unscientific talk about race. Phcebus is not a real 
human being, only an affected counterpart of Dis- 
raeli himself as a Semitic theorist. While these 
everlasting discussions go on, whether Hellenism or 
Hebraism — which, after all, do not include every- 
thing — is the more profound or exalted way of look- 
ing at life, all-uniting, all-embracing nature is lost 
sight of. Everything resolves itself for our author 
into opposing systems, political and religious doc- 
trines or fantasies, and it is very characteristic that 
when at last Madre Natura does appear in his 
books, it is as the name of a secret and revolution- 
ary society. One is inclined to say that she is not 
to be found in any other form with this enemy on 
principle, of naturalism. He always loved politics 



354 Lord Beacons field. 

better than nature, and even as a boy he personified 
nature in the form of the political Muse. 

The exalted position of the author, the piquant 
fact that the late Prime Minister should once more 
appear as a novelist, achieved an unprecedented 
success for " Lothair." So great was the demand 
for the novel, that some of the London booksell- 
ers took 1200 copies of the first edition. A single 
firm in America sold 25,000 copies during the first 
month, and seven editions appeared in a few weeks; 
the book was stereotyped in two forms, translated 
into almost all languages, and, to quote Disraeli's 
own words in the preface, has been "more exten- 
sively read both by the people of the United King- 
dom and the United States, than any work that has 
appeared for the last half-century; "* a circumstance 
which sufficiently proves how little opinion can be 
formed of the value of a book from the number of 
its first readers. ' 

While Disraeli's " Lothair " and Gladstone's 
" Juventus Mundi," which appeared about the same 
time, met on drawing-room tables, and were dis- 
cussed in London drawing-room talk, the leaHer of 
the Opposition was keeping pretty quiet in the 
House of Commons. The last Parliamentary trial 
of strength was so decidedly against him, that for 

* General Preface to Novels, p. viii. 



"Lothair" and Fourth Ministerial Office. 355 

the time he waited patiently and left the field to his 
opponent. Domestic and especially financial re- 
forms followed quickly one upon another during his 
five years' administration, and for these undoubtedly 
Gladstone deserves the highest credit ; but parallel 
with these internal improvements ran that series of 
blunders and defeats in foreign policy which made 
England an object of ridicule to every European 
state. Russia took advantage of the want of good 
faith in English statesmen to tear up the hardly 
won treaty of 1856. Great Britain, having lost all 
her influence, was unable to say a word to any pur- 
pose at the conclusion of the Franco-German war. 
The North American States, embittered by the 
want of good faith in the former Whig Ministry, 
compelled England to submit both the Alabama 
claims and the San Juan affair, the question of the 
Oregon frontier, to arbitration, and the result in 
both cases was unfavourable to England. The sub- 
mission of the San Juan question to the German 
emperor ended in a diplomatic defeat and a loss of 
territory, and the Geneva tribunal imposed an enor- 
mous fine on England. It appeared that the Gov- 
ernment, by its bad management, had subjected 
England to an international court, constituted solely 
for the occasion, and immediately afterwards re- 
jected by the very country in whose favour it had 
decided. It appeared further that Gladstone was 



356 Lord Beaconsfield. 

actually to blame for the severity of the award, for 
he himself stated in the. Commons that he had not 
felt it to be his duty to read the American indict- 
ment, and was therefore ignorant of the "indirect 
claims" of North America. It scarcely need be 
said that the foreign policy of the Ministry called 
forth much Parliamentary criticism from Disraeli. 

Still, it was not this weak foreign policy which 
occasioned the fall of the Ministry, but their daring 
and not always judicious internal reforms. It had 
solved the problem of secret voting, which had been 
a standing question for forty years, by the passing 
of the Ballot Bill, and thereby performed a real ser- 
vice ; but in 1873, Gladstone introduced a new Bill 
for the regulation of University instruction in Ire- 
land, which was intended to secure religious liberty, 
by not only doing away with the Protestant Theo- 
logical Faculty of the Dublin University, but by 
abolition of the lectures on philosophy and modern 
history. It was not to be wondered at that the 
former measure alarmed the Conservatives and the 
latter the Liberals. Disraeli made a thundering 
speech against the Bill, and on a division it ap- 
peared that the powerful majority of a few years 
before had melted away. The Cabinet found itself 
in a minority of three. Gladstone immediately af- 
terwards offered to resign, but his opponent decid- 
edly declined to release him ; he had had enough 



"Lot hair" and Fourth Ministerial Office. 357 

of holding office without a real majority that could 
be relied on, and preferred to allow Gladstone to 
heap up discontent and ill will against himself for a 
whole year. In February, 1874, the Ministry col- 
lapsed, with a majority of about fifty against it, and 
Disraeli formed a new and powerful Administration, 
strong in a majority for the first time in both 
Houses, and supported by the express personal con- 
fidence of the Queen. His life-work seemed now to 
be accomplished, the regenerated Tory party had 
become a power. When, in 1876, he accepted a 
peerage and passed into the Upper House, with the 
title of Earl and Viscount, the step was generally 
supposed to be an entrance on repose ; it was 
thought that the Prime Minister's advanced age and 
weakened health no longer permitted him to sus- 
tain the exertion of the leadership of the Commons, 
and now that the object of his ambition had been 
attained, he. himself regarded his political career as 
ended. This was a great mistake we all know. The 
deeds of Lord Beaconsfield have thrown those of 
Benjamin Disraeli into the shade. The interval of 
three years from that time to this, a short period in 
the life of an old man, has first given him world- 
wide renown. The events of these last years are 
fresh in the remembrance of all. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

CONCLUSION. 

Prime Minister of England, Lord Privy Seal, 
Earl Beaconsfield of Beaconsfield, Viscount Hugh- 
enden of Hughenden, Knight of the Garter — this 
is now the style and title of the man who made his 
debut as author and politician as plain Benjamin 
Disraeli. Let us conclude by seeking an answer to 
the concise question he himself asked at the outset 
of his career : What is he ? 

He is above all a great example of the steady 
perseverance of genius. He understands the art of 
striving and waiting. Few men have sustained so 
long a series of defeats, so much ridicule and con- 
tempt, and have been so undaunted by disaster 
and misfortune. The ridicule was more dangerous 
than the defeats ; but if a striking example were 
wanted to demonstrate that true talent cannot be 
extinguished by the attacks of the press, Lord 
Beaconsfield furnishes that example. He has been 
assailed by many thousands of cutting articles, with 
no friendly press to defend him with anything like 
equal talent or zeal. He found it hard to get him- 

358 



Conclusion. 359 

self regarded as a statesman at all. The tone of 
the press against him is still venomous and personal, 
and yet, with rare coolness, he leaves not only these 
attacks, old and new, unanswered, but even misrep- 
resentations of facts. At least ten times in a year 
the old story of O'Connell's letter of recommenda- 
tion is dished up for him. From the very outset of 
his career, one of his apparently insignificant, but 
most dangerous enemies has been Punch. From 
the beginning of the fourth up into the sixth decade 
of this century, Leech, the cleverest and most pop- 
ular caricaturist in England, furnished this paper, 
the tendencies of which are Liberal, with a sketch 
of him in the most absurd situations and disguises. 
It is worthy of note that in 1868, when Leech's 
widow, who had been put on the Pension List by 
the Whig Ministry, died four years after her hus- 
band, Disraeli ordered that the pension should be 
continued to her orphan children. 

For more than twenty years the press has deter- 
mined public opinion about him, and yet he has 
pushed his way. His story is not that of the ugly 
duckling, who dreads and flees from persecution 
until one fine day it is discovered that it is inno- 
cence itself, and is rewarded by the children with 
bread and cakes. He has never been free from the 
danger of attacks, has never fled from them, and 
has fought for recognition as a bird of prey fights 



360 Lord Be aeons fie Id. 

for his booty. " It came at last, as everything does, 
if men are firm and calm," as he says in " Sybil." 
What is remarkable, and almost unique, is the cer- 
tainty with which, conscious of his powers and 
energy, he foresaw his late and distant triumphs 
from his earliest youth. The reader, perhaps, re- 
members the passage in " Contarini Fleming," 
where the hero sees " seated upon a glorious throne, 
on a proud Acropolis, one to whom a surrounding 
and enthusiastic people offered a laurel crown;"* 
and he will confess that the vision was surpassed by 
reality on the day when Lord Beaconsfield was re- 
ceived by the first men and women in the land at 
Charing Cross station on his return from the Berlin 
Congress, admired and applauded, crowned and 
sung by the people as the bringer of " Peace with 
Honour," and finally conducted to his Ministerial 
residence amidst an endless shower of bouquets. 
The presence of Sir Moses Montefiore on the occa- 
sion, at ninety years of age, gave to the celebration 
a sort of symbolic character, which could not fail to 
make a strong impression on the heart of the man 
who loves to regard himself as the representative of 
his race. 

Perseverance is not a simple, indissoluble quality. 
It may combine many elements, and have many 

* "Contarini Fleming," p. 167. 



Conclusion. 36 [ 

sources. Lord Beaconsfield's perseverance may be 
assigned to his imaginative character : he has had, 
to a surprising extent, the faculty of foreseeing his 
destiny, and because he foresaw it, he persevered. 

He has, then, a fertile imagination ; but is he a 
poet? 

It is the fashion to deny it, but it appears to me 
that the question should be answered in the affirm- 
ative. He certainly cannot be classed among the 
great and faultless poets, nor even among those 
who love and pursue their art for its own sake; he 
has seldom respected the forms of art, and the liter- 
ature of his country is not indebted to him for any 
poetical or technical progress. But it is pedantic so 
to limit the conception of a poet that little chirping 
lyrical writers are included within it, while creative 
spirits are left out. Disraeli appeared at first to be 
a born satirist ; he possessed a genuine Voltairean 
wit. If any one doubts it, let him read the little 
story, " Ixion in Heaven," dating from the first pe- 
riod (1832) ; it is a classic model, a little masterpiece 
of composition, and even Heine might envy the au- 
thor for the ideas. From the productions of pure 
wit, Disraeli gradually attained to those in which 
feeling and passion were the groundwork. In spite 
of its failings, " Contarini Fleming " called forth an 
appreciative letter from Goethe to the author, and a 
favourable criticism from Heine. But Lord Bea- 
16 



362 Lord Beacons field. 

consfield did not find his peculiar sphere until he 
created the form most natural to him, that of the 
, political novel. It was not a generally recognized 
form of art, but it was that which gave the most 
flattering scope to his talents. Within this frame- 
work, he could give free play to his inventive faculty 
and his rhetoric, could entertain while he propa- 
gated his views, give vent to his enthusiasm, and 
discourse on politics. Rhapsodical as this form is, 
it is original and convenient, and is sure to be imi- 
tated when some other fictitious writer feels im- 
pelled to employ his talents in the service of the 
political conflicts of his time. 

Is he, as he considers himself, a representative 
man ? Can he truly be said to be a representative 
of the Semitic race ? If the question be put in this 
direct form, it must be decidedly answered in the 
negative. For the Jewish mind has revealed itself 
in far more affluent and nobler forms than in Dis- 
raeli's comparatively limited mental range; while, 
on the other hand, he classes among the Jews many 
great men whose Jewish origin is wholly unproved. 
Extravagant eulogiums of the abilities of the mod- 
ern Jews are not wanting in his writings. He is 
wearisome in his works with his perpetual lists of 
great Jewish poets, composers, actors and actresses, 
politicians and authors, singers and dancers, etc. ; 
but when he descants upon the peculiar psychology 



Conclusion. 363 

of his race, one is amazed at the narrowness of his 
standpoint. In the " Life of Bentinck" he has tried 
to sketch this psychology as follows : — 

"The Jewish race connects the modern popula- 
tions with the early ages of the world, when the 
relations of the Creator with the created were more 
intimate than in these days, when angels visited the 
earth, and God Himself even spoke with men. The 
Jews represent the Semitic principle; all that* is 
spiritual in our nature. They are the trustees of 
tradition, and the conservators of the religious ele- 
ment. They are a living and the most striking 
evidence of the falsity of that pernicious doctrine of 
modern times, the natural equality of man. The 
political equality of a particular race is a matter of 
municipal arrangement, and depends entirely on 
political considerations and circumstances; but the 
natural equality of man now in vogue, and taking 
the form of cosmopolitan fraternity, is a principle 
which, were it possible to act on it, would deterio- 
rate the great races and destroy all the genius of the 
world. . . . They have also another characteristic, 
the faculty of acquisition. Although the European 
laws have endeavoured to prevent their obtaining 
property, they have nevertheless become remarka- 
ble for their accumulated wealth. Thus it will be 
seen that all the tendencies of the Jewish race are 
Conservative. Their bias is to religion, property, 



364 Lord Be aeons fie Id. 

and natural aristocracy; and it should be the 
interest of statesmen that this bias of a great race 
should be encouraged, and their energies and crea- 
tive powers enlisted in the cause of existing society. 

" But existing society has chosen to persecute 
this race which should furnish its choice allies; and 
what have been the consequences? 

"They may be traced in the last outbreak of 
the destructive principle in Europe. An insurrec- 
tion takes place against tradition and aristocracy, 
against religion and property. Destruction of the 
Semitic principle, extirpation of the Jewish relig- 
ion, whether in the Mosaic or in the Christian form, 
the natural equality of man and the abrogation of 
property are proclaimed by the secret societies, who 
form provisional governments, and men of the 
Jewish race are found at the head of every one of 
them. The people of God co-operate with atheists ; 
the most skilful accumulators of property ally 
themselves with Communists; the peculiar and 
chosen race touch the hand of all the scum and low 
castes of Europe. And all this because they wish to 
destroy that ungrateful Christendom which owes to 
them even its name, and whose tyranny they can 
no longer endure." * 

Had Spinoza, who ought to have a voice on the 

* " Life of Lord George Bentinck," p. 495. 



Conclusion, 365 

question of Jewish genius, read this effusion, he 
would certainly have shaken his noble head. I do 
not know whether Disraeli would reckon him among 
the Communists (as a Republican he is not much 
better) ; an atheist he certainly is. But that he 
belonged to this reprobate set from hatred and re- 
venge, because he was excluded from the Christian 
state, Lord Beaconsfield will hardly succeed in con- 
vincing any one who has read ten pages of his writ- 
ings. If he did not entertain theistic opinions, and 
if according to him the Jews were always the first 
to oppose the " Semitic principle," perhaps this is 
rather to be traced to the eminent critical faculties 
of the race and their sincerity — not a peculiarity of 
other Orientals — than to embitterment at the stu- 
pidity of statesmen. If Jews are most eager in pro- 
claiming to the world that the Israelites are not 
God's chosen people, have not received any special 
revelation, and that mankind is not pre-eminently 
indebted to them, does it not follow that their mo- 
tives are disinterested ? Would it not be easier for 
them to sacrifice their convictions to the sterile Mo- 
loch of pride of race? If, in the year 1848, Jews 
were everywhere found at the head of the revolts 
against antiquated tradition and ancient wrongs — 
like Daniel Manin, whom Disraeli himself once men- 
tions, at the helm in Venice — may it not be attrib- 
uted to love of liberty, twin sister of love of truth? 



366 Lord Be aeons field. 

And when later on, in some important countries, 
well-to-do wealthy Jews, who had no need to envy 
the rich, instigated socialistic movements, may not 
this also be attributed to profound qualities, partly 
critical and partly philanthropic, which had nothing 
whatever to do with hatred of society ? 

The dogmatic and Conservative spirit which hov- 
ers before Lord Beaconsfield's mental vision was 
merely the chrysalis out of which a profoundly criti- 
cal and progressive genius was developed ; it bud- 
ded in the prophets, revealed itself to the world in 
another aspect in Spinoza ; but never lifted up the 
light of its countenance on Lord Beaconsfield. He 
certainly cannot be looked upon as the personifica- 
tion of the many-sidedness of the Jewish race; he 
is wanting in its idealistic tendencies. But of the 
persistent energy, the industry, the perseverance, 
the practical instincts, the quickness and the wit, 
the love of pomp and the ambition of his race, he 
is the typical representative ; and he has that re- 
markable confidence in the superiority of the race 
which has preserved it pure for thousands of years. 
No other being like himself will arise ; the civiliza- 
tion of the age will not permit it ; he was and is 
only a possibility, because his audacious assertion 
of the " Semitic principle " fell in with the great 
romantic religious tendency of the age. But when 
I consider that, according to him, only two possi- 



Conclusion. 367 

bilities are open to the Jews — either to continue 
their life and strife within the limits of Semiticism, 
or to accept the all-embracing modern religion of 
humanity — Disraeli appears to me to be not only a 
distinguished representative of Judaism, but I feel 
inclined to call him the last Jew. 

Is he a great man ? Not if the word be taken 
in its precise and correct sense. Really great men 
wear quite a different aspect. The eminent philos- 
ophers of the eighteenth century were great men, 
because they had faith in ideas, had a religion of 
ideas, and because they unselfishly consecrated their 
lives, amidst many sacrifices, to propagating the 
truths they had perceived. The statesmen who 
were masters of all the wealth of culture of the 
eighteenth century, like Stein and Wilhelm von 
Humboldt, were great men, because, with the all- 
embracing eye of genius, they comprehended and 
looked over the heads of their contemporaries, 
stood far above them, and, undaunted by discour- 
agement, strove to raise them to their own level. 
They were also thoroughly upright and honourable 
men, and no one could ever be in doubt what their 
opinions really were. Lord Beaconsfield is a man 
of a different stamp. Born during the period of 
reaction, he soon comprehended the age, accommo- 
dated himself to it, proclaimed its favourite doc- 
trines in novel forms, and only to a certain extent 



368 Lord Beaconsfield. 

bade defiance to the spirit of the. age, because he 
paid homage to still stronger and more universal 
prejudices. From the first he was wanting in the 
scientific spirit; he has always been ignorant of the 
great idea of evolution — the common central idea 
of philosophy and natural science in the nineteenth 
century. He ridicules it in " Popanilla," where he 
says, in one of the satirical turns in which his 
strength lies : " By developing the water, we get 
fish ; by developing the earth, we get corn, and 
cash, and cotton ; by developing the air, we get 
breath ; by developing the fire, we get heat."* He. 
took up this satire again twenty years later, where 
the book, " The Revelations of Chaos " is described. 
"You know, all is development. The principle is 
perpetually going on. First there was nothing, then 

there was something, then I forget the next ; I 

think there were shells, then fishes ; then we came. 
Let me see, did we come next ? Never mind that ; 
we came at last. And the next change there will 
be something very superior to us — something with 
wings. Ah ! that's it ; we were fishes, and I believe 
we shall be crows. But you must read it."f 

How much he was in earnest with these paro- 
dies of the doctrine of evolution appears from his 
well-known speech at Oxford, in 1864, in which he 



* «< 



Popanilla," p. 377. f " Tancred," p. 109. 



Conclusion, 369 

expressed himself with the strongest emphasis 
against " the most modern scientific school," and 
even made himself ridiculous by summing up the 
scientific discussions of that time as follows: — 
" The question is — Is man an ape or an angel ? 
My lord, I am on the side of the angel." 

It may well be asked whether he really meant 
this, or whether it was only accepted as the neces- 
sary sequence of the doctrine of the superiority of 
and revelation to the Semitic race ; but if he did 
not mean it, so much the worse for him. This and 
other isolated things might be overlooked, though 
it is always to be regretted when a man who desires 
to rule his contemporaries talks like a parish clerk of 
the greatest scientific problems and ideas of his time. 

But these expressions do not stand alone ; they 
coincide with other results of the famous theory of 
race. There are many indications that one par- 
ticular circumstance induced Disraeli to sacrifice his 
thinking faculties, namely, the great religious reac- 
tion which followed the abolition of Christianity 
decreed by the French Revolution. This made him 
think, as it did most of his contemporaries, that 
revealed religion was stronger than all doubts, or 
rather that it had such a hold on people's minds 
that it never could again be superseded in the 
future. The reaction appeared to him to be a 
Semitic reaction against Aryan attempts at emanci- 
16* 



370 Lord Beacons field, 

pation, and in its force he found one of the strongest 
proofs of the indomitable superiority of the Hebrew 
race over the nations of Europe. In his " Life of 
Bentinck," he says that France, since her revolt 
against the Old and New Testaments, had been 
in a state of torpor varied by convulsions, and that 
England owed her prosperity to the circumstance 
that, in spite of her meagre and faulty theology, she 
had never forgotten Zion ; that North America and 
Russia were strictly Semitic (that is, religious) 
countries ; and that if Northern Germany had never 
attained the dominant position in the German 
Empire to which it seemed destined by nature, it 
was because it had never been entirely converted to 
Semitic principles. One is sorry for Disraeli's sake 
that the present powerful position of Prussia was 
not preceded by any Semitic tendencies ; but even 
good prophets sometimes prophesy falsely. 

When science, in the second half of the nine- 
teenth century, emancipated itself from the swad- 
dling bands of reactionary romanticism, the mind of 
Lord Beaconsfield was too deeply engraven with 
its peculiar stamp to admit of new impressions. 
The splendid scientific research, which is the pride 
and glory of our age, has left him wholly untouched. 
When German criticism began to explore antiquity, 
including Biblical antiquity, he either could not or 
would not see anything in it but a repetition of 



Conclusion, 37 l 

the futile attempts of the last century, and in the 
"General Preface" to his works we find the fol- 
lowing sadly stupid or sadly prudent sentence:— 
" One of the consequences of the divine government 
of this world . . i must be occasionally a jealous 
discontent with the revelation entrusted to a par- 
ticular family. But there is no reason to believe 
that the Teutonic rebellion of this century against 
the divine truths entrusted to the Semites will 
ultimately meet with more success than the Celtic 
insurrection of the preceding age." The man who 
could say this in the year 1870, either belonged to 
a past age, or did not mean what he said, and in 
neither case can he be looked upon as a truly great 

man. 

Still, greatness is not an absolute quantity, and 
Lord Beaconsfield is, at any rate, a man of great 
talent and ability. He was always ambitious, and 
he whose first aim is to gain honour and power 
himself, and makes it only a secondary considera- 
tion to employ his talents and the power they have 
won for him in the service of humanity, will inevi- 
tably forfeit true greatness in proportion as he gains 
brilliance of position and renown. Like all others, 
he, once in his youthful days, came to the point 
where two ways met— the one leading to power and 
influence and high position ; the other— that fol- 
lowed by better men, who seek success only in the 



372 Lord Be aeons fie Id. 

second place, and, above all things, remain true to 
their convictions, and strive for this as their only 
direct aim. When Lord Beaconsfield came to these 
cross-roads, his ambition and love of power made 
choice for him. But scarcely was the choice made, 
when all the love of truth and liberty which he pos- 
sessed began a long and continued revolt against it. 
One hears his better nature asserting itself in his 
utterances. He had become a Tory ; but he said at 
once that not one of his contemporaries knew what 
the essence of Toryism consisted in : it was opposi- 
tion to every form of noble oligarchy ; it was an 
alliance between the crown and the people ; and it 
was further explained, on this last point, that the 
power of the sovereign ought not to be increased, 
while the social and political wishes of the people 
should be legally realized. He had become a Con- 
servative ; but he immediately said, " Let us not 
allow ourselves to be imposed upon by those who so 
call themselves ; they must be subjected to a rigid 
inquiry as to what they wish to conserve, and if it 
can be shown to be mere lumber, then, in the name 
of true Conservatism, it must be given up." He be- 
came the leader of the Protectionists ; but no sooner 
were the Corn Laws abolished than he declared that 
he accepted 'free trade. He became the friend 
and greatest ally of the aristocrats ; but he spoke in 
favour of the Chartists, and awakened sympathy for 



Conclusion. 373 

them by a novel. He became chief of a party op- 
posed to reform ; but he it was who carried the great 
Reform Bill, and with the declaration that he had 
always been in favour of household suffrage, and 
that he had had to educate his party. He became 
an orthodox Anglican, and was on all occasions the 
champion of orthodox Christianity as the highest 
truth ; but his explanation of Christianity changed 
it into Judaism ; and again, by his explanation of 
Judaism, he made it appear that the oppressed and 
despised Hebrew race was the first on earth, and 
made religious truth a question of natural science. 
He paid homage to the Church as her most devoted 
son ; but he wrote more enthusiastically than any 
Radical among his contemporaries in honour of By- 
ron and Shelley, and characterized the attitude of 
the Church and religious society towards them as 
stupidity and hypocrisy. And so it has been on 
every question. 

He undoubtedly fell into many an awkward and 
many a ludicrous situation as Conservative leader. 
Punch of 1870 has a witty cartoon illustrative of his 
position. It refers to the efforts of the Disraeli 
Cabinet to extort a promise from the Sultan of 
Zanzibar during his visit to London, to abolish the 
slave trade in his dominions. Disraeli and the sul- 
tan are engaged in conversation. 

"Right Hon. B. D. Now that your Highness 



374 Lord Be aeons field. 

has seen the blessings of freedom, I trust we may 
rely upon your strenuous help in putting down 
slavery ? 

" Sultan Seyyid Barghash. Ah yes ! certainly ! 
But remember, O Sheikh Ben Dizzy, Conservative 
party very strong in Zanzibar ! " 

The impersonality of the jest makes it even more 
cutting than the withering scorn with which O'Con- 
nell in his day characterized Disraeli's going over to 
the Conservative party. It must not, however, be 
forgotten that an English Conservative party, in 
comparison with the Continental reactionary par- 
ties, is always progressive, and that Disraeli himself 
always taught the impossibility of founding a party 
on the basis of resistance to change. And if further 
testimony is required to his liberal conception of 
Toryism, it may -well be found in the fact that 
after the unmeasured insults which O'Connell had 
heaped upon him, and after he had replied to 
them with threats, he sought and found reconcilia- 
tion with O'Connell. 

" I know there are many who don't understand 
the sympathy which is alleged to subsist between ^ 
me and the honourable member for Cork. . . . Our 
acquaintance was an accident. . . . What error 
was it in me, then a very young man, if meeting 
accidentally with a great man who entertained simi- 
lar views, I declared my opinions with that unre- 



Conclusion. 375 

serve and frankness, which I hope I may never 
lose?"* 

The more liberty of action Disraeli has gained, 
the more he has returned to the sympathies of his 
youth. This is expressed with striking truth in the 
anonymous and virulent articles on him (by the 
editor of the Daily News) in the Fortnightly Review, 
August, 1878. "If a man's consistency is to be 
judged solely by comparing the beginning and end 
of his career, Lord Beaconsfield might be accounted 
one of the most consistent of politicians. But there 
is an intervening space, occupying the greater part, 
and the most decisively influential part of his ca- 
reer; and that cannot be left out of the reckoning." 

A more lenient observer would have reversed the 
sentence, and would have said that a politician in 
the peculiar situation of Lord Beaconsfield, ,in con- 
sideration of the agreement between his starting- 
point and the end of his course, may claim some 
indulgence for the sins of the intervening period. 
In that interval he appears as the true disciple of 
the great romantic reaction. His theocratic dreams, 
his deification of the person of his sovereign, his 
aristocratic tendencies, his identification of beauty 
with antiquity or with the beauty of antiquity, his 
high estimate of forms and ceremonies, are sheer 

* " Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield," vol. i. p. 645. 



376 Lord Beaconsfield. 

romanticism. But even as a youth he laid a mine 
underneath all this, and when an old man he set a 
light to it. 

Is he a great statesman ? The rank of a states- 
man is generally partly determined by the results of 
his career, and Lord Beaconsfield is still living, and 
is even now engaged in a great and perilous politi- 
cal action. But it seems to me that if we apply to 
him the standard of the nineteenth century, he must 
be considered a great statesman. His mind and- 
powers were under constraint so long as only a sec- 
ondary post was assigned him as Minister of a spe- 
cial department under the leadership of another, and 
with a minority in Parliament which was not even 
a large one. It has only been since 1874 that it has 
been possible for him to develop his long-husbanded 
powers. It has not been difficult for his enemies to 
point out the un-English character of a mind which, 
like his, acts by surprises, and always appeals to the 
imagination of the masses ; but even beneath such 
formal measures as the proclamation of the Queen 
as Empress of India, the political idea may be 
traced. Now that England has become a semi- 
Oriental power, it can scarcely be considered char- 
latanism for an English politician to try to work on 
the imagination of Orientals. And it almost looks 
as if it had been fore-ordained that it should fall to 
the lot of Lord Beaconsfield to represent England 



Conclusion. 2>77 

daring the last conflict between Russia and Turkey. 
For the Eastern question may be called in an emi- 
nent degree his affair, his cause. It was even felt 
to be so by those who did not clearly comprehend 
it. '"To what extent he may have failed in some 
particulars cannot now be determined, but thus 
much seems certain, that he has not only achieved a 
great deal, but at the same time marked out the 
political lines which England must follow if she is 
seriously resolved to maintain her. vast Asiatic 
colony. If Lord Beaconsfield is not a great states- 
man, he has shown himself the man capable of con- 
trolling a great political situation. This old man of 
seventy-three was practically the only man in Eu- 
rope in the spring of 1878, who had courage and 
firmness enough to bring Russia, intoxicated as she 
was with victory, to a stand. He alone seized the 
Bear by the ear, and dragged him to the Congress 
at Berlin. The considerations which tied the hands 
of the other statesmen of Europe were not binding 
on the representative of England, and the scruples 
which would have fettered every other English 
statesman were nothing to him. One must have 
very little acquaintance with his belief in the prero- 
gative o.f a great personage to suppose for a mo- 
ment that a treaty would prevent him from sending 
the British fleet to Constantinople, or that a clause 
in an Act should prevent him from thus laying em- 



378 Lord Be aeons field, 

phasis on his words. Did not even Vivian Grey say : 
" There wants but one thing more : courage, pure, 
perfect courage ? " 

England had fallen into disrepute among the na- 
tions ; her want of participation in the politics of 
Europe was a subject of ridicule ; the fate of HoU 
land was everywhere foretold for her. I have my- 
self heard from the lips of more than one liberal 
Englishman confessions of shame at this dishonour, 
and the wish that England, even at the risk of stay- 
ing her internal progress, might regain her place 
among the nations of Europe. And at the same 
time, Russia was turning an ever-increasing portion 
of Asia into Russian provinces, and threatened at 
last to make the position of England in India un- 
tenable. While England was not considered to be 
in a position to try her strength with Russia, and 
Europe was laughing at the exasperation of the 
whale with the bear, he gave a voice to the senti- 
ments of the people. I should not wonder if Lord 
Beaconsfield's soul was filled with some such Old 
Testament pathos, as the description of the beasts 
of prey in the Book of Job. " Canst thou draw out 
leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord 
which thou lettest down ? Canst thou put an hook 
into his nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn? 
Will he make many supplications unto thee? will 
he speak soft words unto thee ? Will he make a 



Conclusion. 379 

covenant with thee ? wilt thou take him for a ser- 
vant for ever ? Wilt thou play with him as with a 
bird? or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens? . . . 
Lay thine hand upon him, remember the battle, do 
no more." 

Without firing a shot, or shedding a drop of 
English blood, by the energy he displayed, and by 
adroitly taking advantage of circumstances, he 
gained greater advantages for England than his 
Whig predecessors had gained by the long and 
bloody Crimean war. And even if, by this time, 
the glory of the Treaty of Berlin has to a great 
extent faded away, because its mistakes and short- 
comings have gradually been discerned by the mul- 
titude, still, in order to form a true estimate of Lord 
Beaconsfield's services, one has only to remember 
the amazement of Europe on hearing of English 
preparations against Russia, of English enterprise in 
importing the Indian troops to Malta ; it saw a new 
spirit arising, and, still almost incredulous, became 
convinced that England had awakened from her 
death-like slumbers. 

The life of Lord Beaconsfield, like the lives of all 
great characters, began in mystic, heroic dreams, 
and a youth of poetic emotion, ripening into a ma- 
turity fruitful of great deeds. When a critic tries 
to form a conception of and to delineate his charac- 
ter, he had need be upon his guard ; for the subject 



380 Lord Beaconsfield. 

is ever changing, and demands an ever-changing 
method; mere literary criticism must become psy- 
chological, and psychology must embrace the emo- 
tions of the individual soul and the spirit of the age. 
For his biography by degrees becomes history, and 
his history expands at length into a portion of the 
history of the world. 

I had been musing on this remarkable career 
when, in the year 1870, I saw and heard Disraeli for 
the first time in Parliament. It was a few months 
after the French declaration of war. Disraeli de- 
manded that the papers relating to it should be laid 
upon the table ; Gladstone maintained that he could 
not yet produce them. The debate was not in itself 
important. Disraeli's theories about race became 
intelligible on seeing the two opponents confronted 
with each other, for in the House of Commons he 
literally looked like the representative of a foreign 
race. While Gladstone produced the impression of 
the true-born, distinguished Englishman, with his 
noble, clear-cut profile, his piercing eye, and uncon- 
strained manner ; Disraeli, with his curly black hair, 
his dark complexion, his prominent under lip, and 
determined yet fiery glance, looked like a fire spirit 
confronted with the spirit of the ocean. When he 
began to speak it was evident which was the more 
interesting man of the two. His peculiar eloquence 
made an ineffaceable impression on me ; I have 



Conclusion. 381 

never forgotten its spirit and energy, its fine, well- 
rounded periods, and the dry wit which continually 
called forth peals of laughter from his party. 

I saw Lord Beaconsfield last in July, 1878, during 
the Congress of Berlin. He was staying at the 
Kaiserhof, opposite Princ'e Bismarck's palace; he 
was the acknowledged lion of the Congress, and 
when from his balcony he looked across to his great 
neighbour, he could pride himself on having at- 
tained a fame almost as wide. On this balcony 
were placed, by the attention of the landlord, six 
fine laurel plants, and a little stunted palm, so that 
Lord Beaconsfield, whose imagination had always 
been dreaming of laurels, and whose heroes of ro- 
mance wandered among palms, had symbols of his 
honours and a frail symbol of the home of his race 
before his eyes when he opened his door in the 
morning. 

One day, as I happened to be crossing the 
Wilhelmsplatz, I met him on the narrow footpath 
between the flower-beds, as he was going across the 
square to the Congress, leaning on the arm of his 
secretary, Mr. Montagu Corry. I was so near to 
him that I could look straight into his face. His 
steps were slow; he looked weary, ill, and almost 
irritable. Over-exertion was evident in every line 
of his countenance, and he acknowledged the deep 
and respectful salutations of the good citizens of 



382 Lord Beaconsfield. 

Berlin with a weary and mechanical movement of 
his hand to his hat. But as I gazed into his pale 
and haggard face, I involuntarily thought of all the 
conflicts he had passed through, the disappoint- 
ments he had experienced, the agonies and tor- 
ments he had suffered, and the lofty courage with 
which he had triumphed over them all. I thought 
of his genuine sympathy with the common people 
whose cause he had defended, and with the op- 
pressed race to which he was never ashamed to be- 
long, and whose rights he compelled Roumania to 
acknowledge at the Congress ; and I saw him all at 
once in a more attractive and ideal light, and, al- 
most against my will, a feeling of sympathy took 
possession of my mind. 



THE END. 



SEP -11334 



The best Biography of the Greatest of the Romans. 



GiBSAR: A Sketch. 



BY 



JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, M.A. 



One vol., 8vo, cloth, -with a Steel Portrait and a Map. 

Price, $2.50. 



There is no historical writer of our time who can rival Mr. Fronde in vivid 
delineation of character, grace and clearness of style and elegant and solid 
scholarship. In his ii/e of Caesar, all these qualities appear in their fullest 
perfection, resulting in a fascinating narrative which will be read with keen 
delight by a multitude of readers, and will enhance, if possible, Mr. Froude's 
brilliant reputation. 



CRITICAL NOTICES. 

" The book is charmingly written, and, on the whole, wisely written. There are many 
admirable, really noble, passages ; there are hundreds of pages which few living men 
could match. * * * The political life of Caesar is explained with singular lucidity, 
and with what seems to us remarkable fairness. The horrible condition of Roman 
society under the rule of the magnates is painted with startling power and briiliance c-f 
coloring. — Atlantic Monthly. 

" Mr. Froude's latest work, " Csesar," is affluent of his most distinctive traits. 
Nothing that he has written is more brilliant, more incisive, more interesting. * * * 
He combines into a compact and nervous narrative all that is known of the personal, 
social, political, and military life of Caesar ; and with his sketch of Caesar, includes other 
brilliant sketches of the great men, his friends or rivals, who contemporaneously with 
him formed the principal figures in the Roman world." — Harper's Monthly. 

"This book is a most fascinating biography, and is by far the best account of Julius 
Caesar to be found in the English language." — London Standard. 

" It is the best biography of the greatest of the Romans we have, and it is in some 
respects Mr. Froude's best piece of historical writing." — Hartford Courant. 

Mr. Froude has given the public the best of all recent books oa the life, character 
and career of Julius Caesar." — Phila. Eve. Bulletin. 



%* For sale by all booksellers, or will be sent, prepaid, upon 
receipt of price, by 

CHARLES SCRTBNER'S SONS, 

743 and 745 Broadway, New York. 



' ( 



"The world has waited for this publication, and now that it has appeared, it 
will be diligently read by all men." 



THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

PRINCE METTERNICH. 

Edited by his Son, Prince Metternich. Translated by Robina Napier. 
With a minute index prepared especially /or this edition. 

2 vols., 8vo. With Portrait and Fac-similes - - $5.00. 



For twenty years— since it became known at his death that the great diplomatist 
of the Napoleonic period had left his memoirs — the publication of this book has been 
looked for with such interest as perhaps no other personal revelations could have 
aroused. Prince Metternich's own directions kept it back during this time; and this 
fact, with the complete secresy preserved as to the contents of the manuscript, rightly 
led to the belief that he had treated the events and persons of his day with an un- 
sparing candor. 

The simultaneous publication of the memoirs in Germany, France, England and 
America is therefore something more than a literary event. Metternich alone held the 
keys of the most secret history of the most important epoch in modern times, and in 
this book he gives them up — an impossibility during his life. Even to especial students, 
who know what problems these disclosures have been expected to solve, the value of 
what they open will be as surprising as the extraordinary care with which they have 
been guarded. 

The announcement alone is of sufficient interest, that we are at last in possession 
of the autobiography of the statesman who from the French Revolution to Waterloo, 
took part in the making of nearly every great treaty, and was himself the negotiator 
of the greatest ; and who from 1806 to 1815, was the guiding mind of the vast combin- 
ations which defeated Napoleon and decided the form of modern Europe. 



EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS OF THE METTERNICH 

MEMOIRS. 

" The great chancellor writes with an exceedingly easy pen. It is indeed inter- 
esting to follow his narration, so clear that one never loses the thread of his story, and 
so graphic that we get a glimpse of the scenes as with our own eyes. The work is 
intensely interesting to read, and of the greatest value to the historical student." — 
N. Y. Independent. 

"Of the great value of the work we have already spoken. It not only enables 
the world for the first time to understand clearly the objects for which Prince Metter- 
nich contended throughout his long public life, but casts fresh light on some of the 
most obscure historical incidents of his day." — The Athenceum. 

" The Memoirs of Metternich are to be heartily welcomed by all who are inter- 
ested either in the serious facts or the lighter gossip of history. There is no period, 
indeed, in recent history, more important or attractive than that covered by the first 
volume of these memoirs." — Boston Literary World. 



*#* For sale by all booksellers, or will be sent, prepaid, upon 
receipt of price, by / 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 

743 and 745 Broadway, New York. 



IBS 

H 
■I 

1 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




020 702 620 7 






